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

You can use the grep alternative sift here (disclaimer: I am the author).

It support multiline matching and limiting the search to specific file types out of the box:

sift -m --files '*.py' 'YOUR_PATTERN'

(search all *.py files for the specified multiline regex pattern)

It is available for all major operating systems. Take a look at the samples page to see how it can be used to to extract multiline values from an XML file.