How can I search for a multiline pattern in a file

Question

I needed to find all the files that contained a specific string pattern  The first solution that comes to mind is using find piped with xargs grep   find   -iname    py    xargs grep -e  YOUR PATTERN    But if I need to find patterns that spans on more than one line  I m stuck because vanilla grep can t find multiline patterns

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Using ex vi editor and globstar option  syntax similar to awk and sed    ex    string1   string3 p  -R -scq  file txt   where aaa is your starting point  and bbb is your ending text   To search recursively  try   ex    aaa   bbb p  -scq       py   Note  To enable    syntax  run shopt -s globstar  Bash 4 or zsh

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Here is a more useful example   pcregrep -Mi   lt title gt     n  0 5  lt  title gt   afile html   It searches the title tag in a html file even if it spans up to 5 lines   Here is an example of unlimited lines   pcregrep -Mi    s  lt title gt    lt  title gt   example html

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With silver searcher   ag  abc    n    efg    Speed optimizations of silver searcher could possibly shine here

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You can use the grep alternative sift here  disclaimer  I am the author    It support multiline matching and limiting the search to specific file types out of the box   sift -m --files    py   YOUR PATTERN    search all   py files for the specified multiline regex pattern   It is available for all major operating systems  Take a look at the samples page to see how it can be used to  to extract multiline values from an XML file

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Marcin  awk example non-greedy   awk   if   0    Start pattern    triggered 1  if  triggered   print  if   0    End pattern     exit      filename

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So I discovered pcregrep which stands for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions GREP   For example  you need to find files where the   name  variable is immediatelly followed by the   description  variable   find   -iname    py    xargs pcregrep -M   name   n   description    Tip  you need to include the line break character in your pattern  Depending on your platform  it could be   n    r     r n

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Here is the example using GNU grep   grep -Pzo   name   n   description       -z --null-data Treat  input and output data as sequences of lines    See also here

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perl -ne  print if   begin pattern    end pattern    filename

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grep -P also uses libpcre  but is much more widely installed  To find a complete title section of an html document  even if it spans multiple lines  you can use this   grep -P    s  lt title gt    lt  title gt   example html   Since the PCRE project implements to the perl standard  use the perl documentation for reference    http   perldoc perl org perlre html Modifiers http   perldoc perl org perlre html Extended-Patterns

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This answer might be useful   Regex  grep  for multi-line search needed  To find recursively you can use flags -R  recursive  and --include  GLOB pattern   See   Use grep --exclude --include syntax to not grep through certain files

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Why don t you go for awk   awk   Start pattern   End pattern   filename

[linux] How can I search for a multiline pattern in a file?

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