NAME

Perl::Critic::Policy::RegularExpressions::RequireBracesForMultiline - Use "{" and "}" to delimit multi-line regexps.

AFFILIATION

This Policy is part of the core Perl::Critic distribution.

DESCRIPTION

Long regular expressions are hard to read. A good practice is to use the "x" modifier and break the regex into multiple lines with comments explaining the parts. But, with the usual "//" delimiters, the beginning and end can be hard to match, especially in a "s///" regexp. Instead, try using "{}" characters to delimit your expressions.

Compare these:

    s/
       <a \s+ href="([^"]+)">
        (.*?)
       </a>
     /link=$1, text=$2/xms;

vs.

    s{
       <a \s+ href="([^"]+)">
        (.*?)
       </a>
     }
     {link=$1, text=$2}xms;

Is that an improvement? Marginally, but yes. The curly braces lead the eye better.

CONFIGURATION

There is one option for this policy, "allow_all_brackets". If this is true, then, in addition to allowing "{}", the other matched pairs of "()", "[]", and "<>" are allowed.

CREDITS

Initial development of this policy was supported by a grant from the Perl Foundation.

AUTHOR

Chris Dolan <cdolan@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. The full text of this license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module