How can I search for a multiline pattern in a file?
command-line, find, grep, linux, pcregrep
Solution
So I discovered pcregrep which stands for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions GREP.
the -M option makes it possible to search for patterns that span line boundaries.
For example, you need to find files where the '_name' variable is followed on the next line 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', ...
Problem
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.