vroom: you're assuming /n between each char, when that was just an example.
original poster: there is no way to do the search without stripping, i.e. no extended perl regex to ignore a certain char. and even with stripping it's not that simple to put the \n's back in the right place, but can be done. certainly not in a single regex. perhaps it might be achievable with the extended code regex, unfortunately i don't have the time right now to play with it to that depth. perhaps you were on the right track to start with...and modularize it enough so the code generates strings for you instead of hardcoding.