Add/remove xml tags using a bash script
This would not be difficult to do in sed, as sed also works on ranges.
Try this (assuming xml is in a file named foo.xml):
sed -i '/<b>/,/<\/b>/d' foo.xml
-i will write the change into the original file (use -i.bak to keep a backup copy of the original)
This sed command will perform an action d (delete) on all of the lines specified by the range
# all of the lines between a line that matches <b># and the next line that matches <\/b>, inclusive/<b>/,/<\/b>/
So, in plain English, this command will delete all of the lines between and including the line with <b> and the line with </b>
If you'd rather comment out the lines, try one of these:
# block commentsed -i 's/<b>/<!-- <b>/; s/<\/b>/<\/b> -->/' foo.xml# comment out every line in the rangesed -i '/<b>/,/<\/b>/s/.*/<!-- & -->/' foo.xml
You can use an XSLT such as this that is a modified identity transform. It copies all of the content by default, and has an empty template for b
that does nothing(effectively deleting from output):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"><!--Identity transform copies all items by default --><xsl:template match="@* | node()"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/> </xsl:copy></xsl:template><!--Empty template to match on b elements and prevent it from being copied to output --><xsl:template match="b"/></xsl:stylesheet>
Create a bash script that executes the transform using Java and the Xalan commandline utility like this:
java org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -IN foo.xml -XSL foo.xsl -OUT foo.out
The result is this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?><a><c><cc> Something </cc></c><d> bla </d></a>
EDIT: if you would prefer to have the b
commented out, to make it easier to put back, then use this stylesheet:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"> <!--Identity transform copies all items by default --> <xsl:template match="@* | node()"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> <!--Match on b element, wrap in a comment and construct text representing XML structure by applying templates in "comment" mode --> <xsl:template match="b"> <xsl:comment> <xsl:apply-templates select="self::*" mode="comment" /> </xsl:comment> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="*" mode="comment"> <xsl:value-of select="'<'"/> <xsl:value-of select="name()"/> <xsl:value-of select="'>'"/> <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" mode="comment" /> <xsl:value-of select="'</'"/> <xsl:value-of select="name()"/> <xsl:value-of select="'>'"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="text()" mode="comment"> <xsl:value-of select="."/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="@*" mode="comment"> <xsl:value-of select="name()"/> <xsl:text>="</xsl:text> <xsl:value-of select="."/> <xsl:text>" </xsl:text> </xsl:template></xsl:stylesheet>
It produces this output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?><a><!--<b><bb><yyy> Bla </yyy></bb></b>--><c><cc> Something </cc></c><d> bla </d></a>