hexl-mode: searching for multi byte sequence?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Alfred M. Szmidt writes:
 > Is there some way in hexl-mode to  search for a (hex, octal, ...) byte
 > sequence?  Currently, C-s behaves a  bit strange in at least two regards:
 > 
 > 1) If  file contains  the byte sequence  #xDEADBEAF, depending  on how
 >    they are  aligned (odd  or even  word), one has  to look  for "DEAD
 >    BEAF" and "DE ADBE AF".

C-u C-s de\(.\n\)*ad\(.\|\n\)*be\(.\|\n\)*af

is what I'd use.  It has obvious defects, and it would be nice if
hexl-mode provided something a little less greedy (eg a transformation
to a 3-armed disjunction allowing at most one newline plus handling
the leading byte number after the newline).