Question

I am having a find a replace in a bunch of RTF documents, The basic pattern I need is

\{(?:\\\*)?\\field\\fldlock\{\\\*\\fldinst ?MERGEFIELD ?((?:\\.*?)?[\w\[\]]+?)(?:\\.*?)?\}(?:\{\\fldrslt\})?\}

However I then found out there could potentialy be a newline before each slash, so it turned in to this.

\{(?:\s*\\\*)?\s*\\field\s*\\fldlock\s*\{\s*\\\*\s*\\fldinst\s*MERGEFIELD\s*((?:\\.*?)?[\w\[\]]+?(?:\s*\\.*?)?)?\s*\}(?:\s*\{\s*\\fldrslt\s*\})?\s*\}

But then I hit this it fails

fees totaling $\protect  {\field\fldlock{\*\fldinst MERGEFIELD ENTEROUTSTANDINGVETERINARYF
EES}}\plain\f0\fs24\prot

Is there way have to have it match a new line anywhere in the search too without adding (?:\r?\n)? everywhere?

EDIT

To clear up confusion on the new lines. I need to keep the newlines in the document, I only want to remove the newlines if they are inside my match, so in the final example I posted it should replace

fees totaling $\protect  {\field\fldlock{\*\fldinst MERGEFIELD ENTEROUTSTANDINGVETERINARYF
EES}}\plain\f0\fs24\prot

with

fees totaling $\protect  ENTEROUTSTANDINGVETERINARYFEES\plain\f0\fs24\prot

Answer 1

Unless someone can provide a better answer using some tool of regex I do not know about I was able to solve it for this case by changing the searach for the capture group to

(\\.*?)?([\w\[\]]+)(\s+\w+)?(\s*\\.*?)

I just now have to use four captures instead of one, (this also gives me a set of two capture groups of the actuall printed text, which I need later anyway.