Using grep, treating two lines as one?

Question

Suppose I have a configuration file that can be in one of two format below (short example, but basically the first format is a line that is too long that you have to use a line continuation character, while the second format is just simply a long line without the line continuation)

data1=x data2=y data3=z \
datakey

second format

data=1 data2=y data3=z datakey

I want to match the exact line data1=x data2=y data3=x datakey for both situation. Is there simple way of doing that?

Answer 1

read interprets \ as the line continuation character:

while read line ; do
    if [[ $line == 'data=1 data2=y data3=z datakey' ]] ; then
        echo "$line"
    fi
done