Check: man perlvar
Here is a cut & paste for doing multi line matches...
$MULTILINE_MATCHING
$* Set to a non-zero integer value to do multi-line matching within a string, 0
(or undefined) to tell Perl that
it can assume that strings contain a single line, for the purpose of
optimizing pattern matches. Pattern
matches on strings containing multiple newlines can produce confusing results
when "$*" is 0 or undefined.
Default is undefined. (Mnemonic: * matches multiple things.) This variable
influences the interpretation of
only "^" and "$". A literal newline can be searched for even when "$* == 0".
Use of "$*" is deprecated in modern Perl, supplanted by the "/s" and "/m"
modifiers on pattern matching.
Assigning a non-numerical value to "$*" triggers a warning (and makes "$*" act
if "$* == 0"), while assigning a
numerical value to "$*" makes that an implicit "int" is applied on the value.
> On 20010814.1156, Cory Petkovsek said ...
>
> You can also add in newlines with \n.
>
> perl -pi -e 's/foo/bar\nblah\n3rd line/g' <files>
>
> However, I have not been able to search across lines
> perl -pi -e 's/foo\nbar//g' <files>
>
> But you can search for new lines
> perl -pi -e 's/foo\n//g' <files>
>
> And for dos text files, you need \r\n.
> Or to convert from dos text to unix:
> perl -pi -e 's/\r//g' <files>
>
> This command also works well with stdin/stdout. And the -i (which makes the
> backup file) will do nothing (ie won't hinder) with stdin/out.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rob Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 11:51 AM
> To: EUGLUG
> Subject: [EUG-LUG:2184] Perl to the rescue
>
>
> I recently had the need to do some heavy search and replacement. I
> had to replace a simple string with a huge multi-line text. I was
> looking to sed, but perl can do this easily...
>
> I knew perl can do search and replace from the command line via the
> following:
>
> perl -pi -e 's/foo/bar/g' <files>
>
> And if you add something after the -i, it will make a copy before
> writing the new file:
>
> perl -p -i*.orig -e 's/foo/bar/g' <files>
>
> This will do the same as the first example, except it will copy the
> file first as filename.orig before doing the replacement.
>
> To take it one step further, and add in what my original question was,
> you have:
>
> perl -p -i*.orig -e 's/foo/`cat myfile`/eg' <files>
>
> Here, the /e runs eval on the inside of the s///, so `cat myfile`
> actually dumps the contents of my file inside there and replaces foo
> with it. And I tested it and if <myfile> spans multiple lines, it
> doesn't bother the perl one-liner one bit.
>
> I haven't test this one, but it seems logical that one can do the
> following:
>
> perl -p -i*.orig -e 's/`cat file1`/`cat file2`/eg' <files>
>
> To replace the contents of file1 with the contents of file2.
>
> Mmmm. Perl...........
>
>
