How do I search for a pattern that spans multiple lines in Vim?

Explanation

Vim's regex engine normally treats . as matching any character except a newline. By prefixing a character class with \_, you tell Vim to include newlines in the match. The most common form is \_. — which matches any single character including a newline — letting you build patterns that cross line boundaries.

How it works

• . in Vim regex: matches any character except \n
• \_. : matches any character including \n
• \_s : matches any whitespace including newlines (equivalent to [ \t\n])
• \_[ ] : matches any character in the set, plus newlines

You can combine \_ with other atoms:

• /start\_.\{-}end — non-greedy match from start to end across lines
• /foo\_sbar — matches foo and bar separated by any whitespace or newline

Example

Given a buffer:

error: disk
full

The pattern /error:\_.*full matches across the newline, finding the whole span from error: to full. Without \_, the . would stop at the end of the first line and the pattern would not match.

Tips

• Use \{-} (non-greedy) with \_. to avoid accidentally consuming too much: /start\_.\{-}end
• Pair with :s/start\_.\{-}end/replacement/ to collapse multi-line constructs into a single replacement
• \_^ and \_$ match start/end of line anywhere in the pattern, not just at the edges
• Check :help /\_ for the full list of multi-line atoms