diff --git a/kittens/hints/main.py b/kittens/hints/main.py
index cfb678fa3..87150b857 100644
--- a/kittens/hints/main.py
+++ b/kittens/hints/main.py
@@ -115,14 +115,16 @@ controls where to display the selected error message, other options are ignored.
 --regex
 default={default_regex}
 The regular expression to use when option :option:`--type` is set to
-:code:`regex`, in python syntax. If you specify a numbered group in the regular
+:code:`regex`, in Perl 5 syntax. If you specify a numbered group in the regular
 expression, only the group will be matched. This allow you to match text
 ignoring a prefix/suffix, as needed. The default expression matches lines. To
-match text over multiple lines, you should prefix the regular expression with
-:code:`(?ms)`, which turns on MULTILINE and DOTALL modes for the regex engine.
-If you specify named groups and a :option:`--program`, then the program will be
-passed arguments corresponding to each named group of the form
-:code:`key=value`.
+match text over multiple lines, things get a little tricky, as line endings
+are a sequence of zero or more null bytes followed by either a carriage return
+or a newline character. To have a pattern match over line endings you will need to
+match the character set ``[\0\r\n]``. The newlines and null bytes are automatically
+stripped from the returned text. If you specify named groups and a
+:option:`--program`, then the program will be passed arguments corresponding
+to each named group of the form :code:`key=value`.
 
 
 --linenum-action