Question

I am replacing one multi-line pattern:

</p>
<ul>

using following sed command:

sed -e 's|<\/p>\n<ul>|\\begin{itemize}|g'

but it does not seem to be working fine. How can I replace above pattern using sed.

Answer 1

Assuming you have GNU sed, you can use a loop:

sed ':a; N; $!ba; s|</p>\n<ul>|\\begin{itemize}|g' file

For BSD/OSX sed, try:

sed -e ':a' -e 'N' -e '$!ba' -e 's|</p>\n<ul>|\\begin{itemize}|g' file

---

As per comments, simply add in the spaces at the beginning of each line:

sed ':a; N; $!ba; s| *</p>\n *<ul>|\\begin{itemize}|g' fileg