How do I match any character across multiple lines in a regular expression

Question

For example  this regex       lt FooBar gt    will match   abcde lt FooBar gt    But how do I get it to match across multiple lines   abcde fghij lt FooBar gt

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we can also use       n      to match everything including newline without greedy  This will make the new line optional        n

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In Javascript you can use      to search for zero to infinite characters  including line breaks    x000D   x000D      find and replace   click function     x000D    var text       textarea   val    x000D    search term   new RegExp       lt Foobar gt     gi     x000D    replace term    Replacement term   x000D    var new text   text replace search term  replace term   x000D        textarea   val new text   x000D      x000D   lt script src  https   cdnjs cloudflare com ajax libs jquery 3 3 1 jquery min js  gt  lt  script gt  x000D   lt button id  find and replace  gt Find and replace lt  button gt  x000D   lt br gt  x000D   lt textarea ID  textarea  gt abcde x000D  fghij amp lt Foobar amp gt  lt  textarea gt  x000D   x000D   x000D

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s S    lt FooBar gt   The dot matches all except newlines   r n   So use  s S  which will match ALL characters

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The question is  can   pattern match any character  The answer varies from engine to engine  The main difference is whether the pattern is used by a POSIX or non-POSIX regex library   Special note about lua-patterns  they are not considered regular expressions  but   matches any char there  same as POSIX based engines   Another note on matlab and octave  the   matches any char by default  demo   str    abcde n     fghij lt Foobar gt    expression         lt Foobar gt      tokens matches    regexp str expression  tokens   match     tokens contain a abcde n     fghij item    Also  in all of boost s regex grammars the dot matches line breaks by default  Boost s ECMAScript grammar allows you to turn this off with regex constants  no mod m  source    As for oracle  it is POSIX based   use n option  demo   select regexp substr  abcde     chr 10          fghij lt Foobar gt          lt Foobar gt    1  1   n   1  as results from dual  POSIX-based engines   A mere   already matches line breaks  no need to use any modifiers  see bash  demo    The tcl  demo   postgresql  demo   r  TRE  base R default engine with no perl TRUE  for base R with perl TRUE or for stringr stringi patterns  use the   s  inline modifier   demo  also treat   the same way     However  most POSIX based tools process input line by line  Hence    does not match the line breaks just because they are not in scope  Here are some examples how to override this    sed - There are multiple workarounds  the most precise but not very safe is sed  H 1h   d x  s        gt  lt Foobar gt   1    H 1h   d x  slurps the file into memory   If whole lines must be included  sed   start pattern   end pattern d  file  removing from start will end with matched lines included  or sed   start pattern   end pattern      d      file  with matching lines excluded  can be considered  perl - perl -0pe  s      lt FooBar gt   1 gs   lt  lt  lt    str   -0 slurps the whole file into memory  -p prints the file after applying the script given by -e   Note that using -000pe will slurp the file and activate  paragraph mode  where Perl uses consecutive newlines   n n  as the record separator  gnu-grep - grep -Poz    si abc K       lt Foobar gt    file  Here  z enables file slurping    s  enables the DOTALL mode for the   pattern    i  enables case insensitive mode   K omits the text matched so far     is a lazy quantifier      lt Foobar gt   matches the location before  lt Foobar gt   pcregrep - pcregrep -Mi    si abc K       lt Foobar gt    file  M enables file slurping here   Note pcregrep is a good solution for Mac OS grep users    See demos   Non-POSIX-based engines    php - Use s modifier PCRE DOTALL modifier  preg match        lt Foobar gt  s    s   m   demo  c  - Use RegexOptions Singleline flag  demo    - var result   Regex Match s         lt Foobar gt    RegexOptions Singleline  Groups 1  Value - var result   Regex Match s      s      lt Foobar gt    Groups 1  Value  powershell - Use   s  inline option   s    abcde nfghij lt FooBar     s -match    s      lt Foobar     matches 1  perl - Use s modifier  or   s  inline version at the start   demo         lt FooBar gt  s python - Use re DOTALL  or re S  flags or   s  inline modifier  demo   m   re search r      lt FooBar gt    s  flags re S   and then if m   print m group 1    java - Use Pattern DOTALL modifier  or inline   s  flag   demo   Pattern compile       lt FooBar gt    Pattern DOTALL  groovy - Use   s  in-pattern modifier  demo   regex      s      lt FooBar gt   scala - Use   s  modifier  demo      s      lt Foobar gt   r findAllIn  abcde n    fghij lt Foobar gt    matchData foreach   m   gt  println m group 1     javascript - Use     or workarounds   d D      w W      s S   demo   s match     s S    lt FooBar gt    1  c    std  regex  Use   s S  or the JS workarounds  demo   regex rex R     s S    lt FooBar gt      vba vbscript - Use the same approach as in JavaScript     s S    lt Foobar gt     NOTE  The MultiLine property of the RegExp object is sometimes erroneously thought to be the option to allow   match across line breaks  while  in fact  it only changes the   and   behavior to match start end of lines rather than strings  same as in JS regex  behavior   ruby - Use  m MULTILINE modifier  demo   s       lt Foobar gt  m  1  rtrebase-r - Base R PCRE regexps - use   s   regmatches x  regexec    s      lt FooBar gt   x  perl TRUE    1   2   demo  ricustringrstringi - in stringr stringi regex funtions that are powered with ICU regex engine  also use   s   stringr  str match x     s      lt FooBar gt     2   demo  go - Use the inline modifier   s  at the start  demo   re    regexp MustCompile    s      lt FooBar    swift - Use dotMatchesLineSeparators or  easier  pass the   s  inline modifier to the pattern  let rx      s      lt Foobar gt   objective-c - Same as Swift    s  works the easiest  but here is how the option can be used  NSRegularExpression  regex    NSRegularExpression regularExpressionWithPattern pattern  options NSRegularExpressionDotMatchesLineSeparators error  amp regexError   re2  google-apps-script - Use   s  modifier  demo      s      lt Foobar gt    in Google Spreadsheets   REGEXEXTRACT A2    s      lt Foobar gt       NOTES ON   s    In most non-POSIX engines    s  inline modifier  or embedded flag option  can be used to enforce   to match line breaks   If placed at the start of the pattern    s  changes the bahavior of all   in  the pattern  If the   s  is placed somewhere after the beginning  only those   will be affected that are located to the right of it unless this is a pattern passed to Python re  In Python re  regardless of the   s  location  the whole pattern   are affected  The   s  effect is stopped using   -s   A modified group can be used to only affect a specified range of a regex pattern  e g  Delim1  s      nDelim2   will make the first     match across newlines and the second    will only match the rest of the line    POSIX note   In non-POSIX regex engines  to match any char    s S      d D      w W  constructs can be used   In POSIX    s S  is not matching any char  as in JavaScript or any non-POSIX engine  because regex escape sequences are not supported inside bracket expressions    s S  is parsed as bracket expressions that match a single char    or s or S

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Note that     n   can be less efficient than  for example    s S    if your language s regexes support such escapes  and than finding how to specify the modifier that makes   also match newlines   Or you can go with POSIXy alternatives like    space     space

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In Ruby ruby you can use the  m  option  multiline     YOUR REGEXP m   See the Regexp documentation on ruby-doc org for more information

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normally doesn t match line-breaks  Most regex engines allows you to add the S-flag  also called DOTALL and SINGLELINE  to make     also match newlines  If that fails  you could do something like   S s

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If you re using Eclipse search  you can enable the  DOTALL  option to make     match any character including line delimiters  just add    s   at the beginning of your search string  Example      s    lt FooBar gt

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Solution   Use pattern modifier sU will get the desired matching in PHP   example   preg match        sU   content  match     Source   http   dreamluverz com developers-tools regex-match-all-including-new-line http   php net manual en reference pcre pattern modifiers php

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I had the same problem and solved it in probably not the best way but it works   I replaced all line breaks before I did my real match   mystring  Regex Replace mystring    r n         I am manipulating HTML so line breaks don t really matter to me in this case    I tried all of the suggestions above with no luck  I am using  Net 3 5 FYI

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For Eclipse worked following expression      Foo      jadajada Bar    Regular-Expression    Foo  S s  1 10   Bar

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Typically searching for three consecutive lines in Powershell it would look like    file   get-content file txt -raw   pattern    lineone r nlinetwo r nlinethree r n         windows  text  pattern    lineone nlinetwo nlinethree n               unix  text  pattern    lineone r  nlinetwo r  nlinethree r  n     both   file -match  pattern    output True   Bizarrely  this would be unix text at the prompt  but windows text in a file    pattern    lineone linetwo linethree     Here s a way to print out the line endings    lineone linetwo linethree   -replace   r    r  -replace   n    n     output lineone nlinetwo nlinethree n

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In java based regular expression you can use   s S

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Try this          n    lt FooBar gt    It basically says  any character or a newline  repeated zero or more times

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Often we have to modify a substring with a few  keywords spread across lines preceding the substring  Consider an xml element    lt TASK gt     lt UID gt 21 lt  UID gt     lt Name gt Architectural design lt  Name gt     lt PercentComplete gt 81 lt  PercentComplete gt   lt  TASK gt    Suppose we want to modify the 81  to some other value  say 40   First identify  UID 21  UID   then skip all characters including  n till  PercentCompleted   The regular expression pattern and the replace specification are   String hw   new String   lt TASK gt  n   lt UID gt 21 lt  UID gt  n   lt Name gt Architectural design lt  Name gt  n   lt PercentComplete gt 81 lt  PercentComplete gt  n lt  TASK gt     String pattern   new String     lt UID gt 21 lt  UID gt       n      lt PercentComplete gt     d    lt  PercentComplete gt      String replaceSpec   new String    1 2 440 6      note that the group   lt PercentComplete gt   is  4 and the group      n     is  2   String  iw   hw replaceFirst pattern  replaceSpec   System out println iw     lt TASK gt     lt UID gt 21 lt  UID gt     lt Name gt Architectural design lt  Name gt     lt PercentComplete gt 40 lt  PercentComplete gt   lt  TASK gt    The subgroup     n  is probably the missing group  3  If we make it non-capturing by       n  then the  3 is    lt PercentComplete gt    So the pattern and replaceSpec can also  be   pattern   new String    lt UID gt 21 lt  UID gt         n      lt PercentComplete gt     d    lt  PercentComplete gt      replaceSpec   new String   1 2 340 5     and the replacement works correctly as before

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Use RegexOptions Singleline  it changes the meaning of   to include newlines  Regex Replace content  searchText  replaceText  RegexOptions Singleline

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It depends on the language  but there should be a modifier that you can add to the regex pattern  In PHP it is         lt FooBar gt  s   The s at the end causes the dot to match all characters including newlines

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generally   doesn t match newlines  so try      n    lt foobar gt

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In the context of use within languages  regular expressions act on strings  not lines  So you should be able to use the regex normally  assuming that the input string has multiple lines   In this case  the given regex will match the entire string  since   lt FooBar gt   is present  Depending on the specifics of the regex implementation  the  1 value  obtained from the         will either be  fghij  or  abcde nfghij   As others have said  some implementations allow you to control whether the     will match the newline  giving you the choice   Line-based regular expression use is usually for command line things like egrep

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lt FooBar gt  s   the s causes Dot     to match carriage returns

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Try     n    lt FooBar gt  assuming you are also allowing blank newlines  As you are allowing any character including nothing before  lt FooBar gt

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In many regex dialects     S s   lt Foobar gt   will do just what you want  Source

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I wanted to match a particular if block in java                   if isTrue          doAction                      If I use the regExp   if   isTrue    n      it included the closing brace for the method block so I used  if    isTrue        n      to exclude the closing brace from the wildcard match

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Option 1  One way would be to use the s flag  just like the accepted answer          lt FooBar gt  s   Demo 1  Option 2  A second way would be to use the m  multiline  flag and any of the following patterns       s S    lt FooBar gt  m   or       d D    lt FooBar gt  m   or       w W    lt FooBar gt  m   Demo 2  RegEx Circuit  jex im visualizes regular expressions

[regex] How do I match any character across multiple lines in a regular expression?

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