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The trick to deleting to replacing a sequence of characters that extends over multiple lines was given by Bob Hansen. Namely, first you have to replace all new lines with a unique code. Then you can use a regular expression like START.*END to find and replace the sequence that starts with START and ...

My apologies to everyone. My foot is in my mouth. I don't know what I was doing wrong. I thought I tried the regular expression several times and it didn't work for me. But when I followed the posted instructions, it worked!

When someone suggested that I write a simple program, I came to the conclusion - perhaps inaccurately - that there isn't an interest in nailing down this problem.

My impression is that this is a problem with the regualar expression processor. The regular expression "START.*END" does not work ...

Hi Bob,

I need to specify a start and an end, e.g. "START.*END" and delete everything in-between as well as the start and end. Unfortunately, the file is very large and the pattern occurs many times. I can always do this manually. But I am sure the problem will come up again and I am looking for a ...

OK, I eliminated the new lines. I am left with a regular expression like this:

START.+END

where "START" and "END" are the fixed sequence of characters and any characters can be in between. I tested this in another regular expression processor (Java) and it works - but not in TextPad.

Any more ...

I am trying to write a regular expression that will replace or delete multiple lines that always start and end with a fixed sequence of characters. For example:

START OF DATA
.
.
.
END OF DATA

The problem I have is that . does not match line terminators. Also, I can't have a class [.\n]. Any ...