matchstr() ^ and $ wrong for multi-line text?

I noticed that matchstr() seems to always interpret ^ as start-of-string and $ as end-of-string, even when the string is multiple lines. ":help pattern" says they should be start-of-line and end-of-line, respectively.

For example
:echo matchstr("foo\nbar", '^foo$')
matches nothing.

I don't see anything in the matchstr() help indicating that it treats start-of-line and end-of-line any differently. I tried \_^ and \_$ as well. Is this a bug?

David

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