How would I match a string that may or may not span multiple lines?

Question

I have a document that when converted to text splits the phone number onto multiple lines like this:

(xxx)-xxx-
xxxx

For a variety of reasons related to my project I can't simply join the lines.

If I know the phonenumber="(555)-555-5555" how can I compile a regex so that if I run it over

(555)-555- 5555

it will match?

**EDIT

To help clarify my question here it is in a more abstract form.

test_string = "xxxx xx x xxxx"
text = """xxxx xx
x
xxxx"""

I need the test string to be found in the text. Newlines can be anywhere in the text and characters that need to be escaped should be taken into consideration.

Answer 1

A simple workaround would be to replace all the \n characters in the document text before you search it:

pat = re.compile(r'\(\d{3}\)-\d{3}\d{4}')
numbers = pat.findall(text.replace('\n',''))

# ['(555)-555-5555']

If this cannot be done for any reasons, the obvious answer, though unsightly, would be to handle a newline character between each search character:

pat = re.compile(r'\(\n*5\n*5\n*5\n*\)\n*-\n*5\n*5\n*5\n*-\n*5\n*5\n*5\n*5')

If you needed to handle any format, you can pad the format like so:

phonenumber = '(555)-555-5555'
pat = re.compile('\n*'.join(['\\'+i if not i.isalnum() else i for i in phonenumber]))

# pat 
# re.compile(r'\(\n*5\n*5\n*5\n*\)\n*\-\n*5\n*5\n*5\n*\-\n*5\n*5\n*5\n*5', re.UNICODE)

Test case:

import random
def rndinsert(s):
    i = random.randrange(len(s)-1)
    return s[:i] + '\n' + s[i:]

for i in range(10):
    print(pat.findall(rndinsert('abc (555)-555-5555 def')))

# ['(555)-555-5555']
# ['(555)-5\n55-5555']
# ['(555)-5\n55-5555']
# ['(555)-555-5555']
# ['(555\n)-555-5555']
# ['(5\n55)-555-5555']
# ['(555)\n-555-5555']
# ['(555)-\n555-5555']
# ['(\n555)-555-5555']
# ['(555)-555-555\n5']