CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexperlsedawkpattern-matching
chipram teacher
chipram teacher

Reputation: 11

Replace strings with double quotes in a XML file

I have a huge XML file with longer lines (5000-10000 characters per line) with following text:

Pattern="abc"

and I want to replace it with 

Pattern="def"

As the line sizes are huge, I have no choice but to use awk. Please suggest how this can be achieved. I tried with the below but it is not working:

CMD="{sub(\"Pattern=\"abc\"\",\"Pattern=\"def\"\"); print}"
echo "$CMD"
awk "$CMD" "Some File Name.xml"

Any help is highly appreciated.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 435

Answers (3)

Ed Morton
Ed Morton

Reputation: 203491

I don't understand why you said "As the line sizes are huge, I have no choice but to use awk". AFAIK sed is no more limited on line length than awk is and since this is a simple substitution on a single line, sed is the better choice of tool:

$ cat file
Pattern="abc"
$ sed -r 's/(Pattern=")[^"]+/\1def/' file
Pattern="def"

If the pattern occurs multiple times on the line, add a "g" to the end of the line.

Since you mention in your comment being stuck with a sed that can't handle long lines, let's assume you can't install GNU tools so you'll need a non-GNU awk solution like this:

$ awk '{sub(/Pattern="[^"]+/,"Pattern=\"def")}1' file
Pattern="def"

If you LITERALLY mean you only want to replace Pattern="abc" then just do:

$ awk '{sub(/Pattern="abc"/,"Pattern=\"def\"")}1' file
Pattern="def"

Upvotes: 2

captcha
captcha

Reputation: 3756

one suggestion with 

BEGIN {FS="\""; OFS=""}
/Pattern="abc"/{$2="\"def\""}1

Upvotes: 2

TrueY
TrueY

Reputation: 7610

If You have you can try this:

Create file with long lines (>10_000 chars):

for((i=0;i<2500;++i));{ s="x$s";}
l="${s}Pattern=\"abc\"$s"
for i in {1..5}; { echo "$l$l";} >infile

The script:

while read x; do echo "${x//Pattern=\"abc\"/Pattern=\"def\"}";done <infile

This replaces all occurrences of Pattern="abc" to Pattern="def" in each line.

Upvotes: 0

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