曾處理Oracle一項產品叫OGG(Oracle Golden Gate)，它產出一個定義檔javaue.def。長相如下：

*
 *
 Definition for table TESTUTF8.T1
 Record length: 112
 Syskey: 0
 Columns: 2
 C1   64     50        0  0  0 1 0     50     50     50 0 0 0 0 1    0 1 2
 C2   64     50       56  0  0 1 0     50     50      0 0 0 0 0 1    0 0 0
 End of definition
* TEST T2
 Definition for table TESTUTF8.T2
 Record length: 112
 Syskey: 0
 Columns: 2
 C1   64     50        0  0  0 1 0     50     50     50 0 0 0 0 1    0 1 2
 C2   64     50       56  0  0 1 0     50     50      0 0 0 0 0 1    0 0 0
 End of definition

要取得符合從Definition for table到End of definition內容，怎麼取得？因為有跨行情況，所以在Java上可以這樣寫：

import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class TestRegexMultiLines {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
         FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("./javaue.def");
         byte[] ba = new byte[fis.available()];
         fis.read(ba);
         String javadef = new String(ba);
         Pattern pat = Pattern.compile("Definition for table .*?End of definition", Pattern.DOTALL);
         Matcher mat = pat.matcher(javadef);
         while (mat.find()) {
             System.out.println("========================");
             System.out.println(mat.group());
         }
    }
}

主要是在Pattern.compile第二個參數要帶Pattern.DOTALL，才能進行跨行比對。而.*?這個不貪多量詞常被筆者用在各個專案和或維運上。
若不帶第二個參數也是可以，改用(?s)，例：

Pattern pat = Pattern.compile("(?s)Definition for table .*?End of definition");