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:

Answer 1

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)' 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