Find and replace text containing a new line

Question

In bash, how can I find and replace some text containing a new line?

I want to match exactly 2 lines as specified (I can't match them separately as both lines appear at different places separately & I only want to replace where both lines appear consecutively). Using sed I was able to find and replace the individual lines and new line separately, but not together!

In case if needed, below are the lines I want to find and replace (from multiple files at once!):

} elseif ($this->aauth->is_member('Default')) { $form_data['userstat'] = $this->aauth->get_user()->id;

if you are replacing using captured groups, yes; so, good luck — guido
– guido, Commented Oct 9, 2017 at 21:32
I don't know what does that mean. But what I actually need is to remove the second line wherever those both lines occur together. Despite of this specific case I'd like to know how to find and replace multiple lines in general. Thanks. — Ambady Anand S
– Ambady Anand S, Commented Oct 9, 2017 at 21:37

sauerburger · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-24 23:00:51Z

In general you can used sed -z which tells sed to use the null-character to split lines. Assume you have the file text containing

Hello World This is a line line1 line2 Hello World, again line1 line2 end

Executing sed -z -e 's/line1\nline2/xxx/g' text yields

Hello World This is a line xxx Hello World, again xxx end

You can add * (that is <space><star>) to handle inconsistent white spaces.

In your specific case if you want to delete the second line you can use a block statement to advance to the next line and delete it if it matches the second line

sed -e '/line1/{n;/line2/d}' text

potong · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-10 01:42:03Z

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed -i 'N;s/first line\nsecond line/replacement/;P;D' file ...

Keep a moving window of two lines in the pattern space and replace when necessary.

N.B. -i option updates file(s) in place.

Also using a range and the change command:

sed -i '/first line/,/second line/c\replacement1\nreplacement2\netc' file ...

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