How do I get multi-line string between two braces containing a specific search string?

Question

I\'m looking for a quick and easy one-liner to extract all brace-delimited text-blocks containing a search string from a text file. I\'ve just about googled myself crazy on

Answer 1

Here is a modified version of this gem from 'leu' (10x leu for enlighten us). This one is doing something very similarly. Extract everything between which begin with 'DEC::PKCS7[' and ending with ']!':

cat file | sed '/^DEC::PKCS7\[/{s///; :1; /\]\!$/!{N; b1;}; s///;};'
Explanation:
/^DEC::PKCS7\[/             # if current line begins with 'DEC::PKCS7[' then execute next block
{                           # start block
    s///;                       # remove all upto 'DEC::PKCS7['
    :1;                         # label '1' for code to jump to
    /\]\!$/!                     # if the line does not end with ']!' then execute next block
    {                               # start block
        N;                          # add next line to pattern space
        b1;                         # jump to label 1
    };                          # end block
    s///;                       # remove all from ']!' to end of line
};                          # end block

Notes:

• This works on single and multi-line.
• This will have unexpected behavior if you have ']!' in the middle of the input.
• This does not answer the question. It's already answered very well. My intentions are just to help other cases.