Linefeed in batch regex

Question 1

Your regex is wrong. Your source lines end immediately after the =, but the extra . in your regex is looking for an additional character after the =.

It looks to me you are using . to represent white space. I think you would be better off using actual spaces, but then you need the /C option.

The following matches the lines successfully.

@echo off
SETLOCAL
set LF=^


FOR /F %%A IN ('COPY /Z "%~dpf0" NUL') DO SET "CR=%%A"

SETLOCAL enableDelayedExpansion
FINDSTR /R /C:"LABO_A =!CR!*!LF! *(DESCRIPTION =!CR!*!LF! *(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = host01)(PORT = 1521))!CR!*!LF! *(CONNECT_DATA =!CR!*!LF! *(SERVICE_NAME = LABO)!CR!*!LF! *)!CR!*!LF! *)" test.txt

Note that even though all lines in the regex are matched, only the first line of the matching set is printed.

I suspect that the line breaks are not required in your configuration file. Here is another variation that allows for more variation in the white space.

@echo off
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
set LF=^


FOR /F %%A IN ('COPY /Z "%~dpf0" NUL') DO SET "CR=%%A"
set "ws=[ !cr!!lf!]*"

FINDSTR /RX /C:"LABO_A =!ws!(DESCRIPTION =!ws!(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = host01)(PORT = 1521))!ws!(CONNECT_DATA =!ws!(SERVICE_NAME = LABO)!ws!)!ws!)!ws!" test.txt

I also attempted to allow white space in every place I thought possible, but that exceeded FINDSTR's maximum REGEX string length.

Question 2

Essentially, batch regex isn't powerful enough. SED would be better no doubt.

Nonetheless, here's a way to detect that a sequence of lines appears in a file. It's a little restricted, but should suffice for the sequence you've nominated. It assumes that leading spaces are not significant.

@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL enabledelayedexpansion
FOR /f "delims==" %%a IN ('set l_ 2^>nul') DO "SET %%a="
SET /a lines=0
FOR /f "tokens=*" %%a IN (q19859936.txt) DO SET /a lines+=1&SET l_!lines!=%%a

SET hits=0
SET "stop="
FOR /f "tokens=*" %%a IN (q19859936.test) DO (
 SET l_0=%%~a
 CALL :test
 IF DEFINED stop GOTO done
)
:done
IF DEFINED stop (ECHO FOUND ) ELSE (ECHO NOT FOUND)

GOTO :EOF

:test
SET /a hits+=1
ECHO IF NOT "!l_%hits%!"=="%l_0%" 
IF NOT "!l_%hits%!"=="%l_0%" SET hits=0&IF %hits%==1 (GOTO :eof) ELSE (GOTO test)
IF %hits%==%lines% SET stop=Y
GOTO :eof

[edited code 20131111T1408Z - first FOR had tokens=2]

The initial FOR ensures that variables L_* are cleared.

The file q19859936.txt is read as the line-sequence-to-be-detected data.

q19859936.test is then examined. Each line is assigned to L_0 in turn and the internal subroutine :test will check to see whether it matches the next-line-expected.

The IF NOT statement is significant - and seemingly illogical (you'd need to add the /i switch to make it case-insensitive if you so want...) When batch parses the line, %hits% is replaced by the then-current value of hits and THEN the line is executed, so hits will be reset to 0 if ever a mismatch is found. If the HITS count WAS not 1, then the test is repeated. This takes care of the case

matches line 1
matches line 2
matches line 3
matches line 1
matches line 2
matches line 3
matches line 4
matches line 5
matches line 6

where the second "line 1" is encountered when "line 4" was expected. HITS is thus changed to 0, but it WAS 4 so execution passes back to :test and the test repeated with HITS=1.

Another approach could have been to read lines into another array (say L#*) and test that L_* matched L#*, for %LINES% entries. On no match, ripple-up and assign the next line read to L#!lines! ... but I thought of that later. Probably be easier and better, too - I'll leave it as an exercise for whoever may be interested.

Question 3

This will work if you are after the LABO_A reference.

It uses a helper batch file called findrepl.bat from - https://www.dropbox.com/s/rfdldmcb6vwi9xc/findrepl.bat

Place findrepl.bat in the same folder as the batch file or on the path.

type "file.txt" | findrepl "^LABO_A =" /e:"^  \)"