Thanks for the help!! The system is a complete automation application which allows users to enter expected results and to allow the step to pass/fail based on the comparison of the expected result vs the actual result. I've allowed the inclusion of regular expressions in the expected result but I can't change the matching logic on the fly so I need something that will match multi-line and single line as well as empty text. I added some logic from the original suggestion so that If the expected result is an empty string I do the negative match and for all other strings I proceed with the normal multiline match. Thank you again for the help!!!