#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