This is still a valid issue. (As of Python 2.6a1+ (trunk:61434, Mar 17 
2008, 08:06:54).)

>>> bool(re.match("abc(?i)","AbC"))
True

The documentation says that the behavior of a regex with (?<letter>) not 
at the beginning is undefined.

Short of implementing Java/Perl behavior, this should be made an error 
rather than undefined so that users porting their code from Java/Perl 
get an early warning.