Other implementation of regular expressions handle "newline" mechanics related to "^" and "$" semantically instead of literally. By that I mean that both "\r\n" and "\n" are considered "newlines" instead of just "\n".
If changing behavior is not desirable I would be content with another flag that would toggle such behavior. In code - both of these subqueries should match whereas presently only the first one does. SELECT regexp_matches(E'123\n', E'123$', 'w'); SELECT regexp_matches(E'123\r\n', E'123$', 'w'); I don't know if this is server O/S dependent...but I would not expect it to be so. Having to say something like: , 'wr' (r = combine-\r-with-adjacent-newline) would be OK but not ideal. I'm not seeing much risk in changing this particular behavior. Thanks! David J. P.S. Forgive me for re-iterating the dislike of calling and describing "w" as "weird" and "rarely useful". I find it to be quite useful and my source material doesn't seem particularly unusual.