Using previous match in the same matching regexp (now with newlines!)

cyberconte has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

This question builds upon the previous question located here. This time, theres a newline in the line, as such:

my $string = "16 abc\ndefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
[download]

I found that adding the newline broke the following answer:

my ($len,$substring) = ($string =~ /^(\d+) ((??{".{$1}"}))/s);
[download]

I did some reading up on the experimental postponed regexp, but it doesn't look like theres a '/s' equivilant for the postponed section.

Am i cursed to de-obfuscation with this kind of match?

Thank you for your answers!

Comment on Using previous match in the same matching regexp (now with newlines!) Select or Download Code

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Re: Using previous match in the same matching regexp (now with newlines!) by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Nov 18, 2005 at 15:50 UTC
`my ($len,$substring) = ($string =~ /^(\d+) ((??{"(?s).{$1}"}))/s);` [download] See perlre on `(?imsx-imsx)`. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Using previous match in the same matching regexp (now with newlines!) by cyberconte (Scribe) on Nov 18, 2005 at 16:51 UTC
Thank you, wise one :-) Not only for the answer, but the reference.	[reply]