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up vote 3 down vote favorite

I have the following file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--Generated by crowdin.net-->
  <string name="test" >- test</string>
  <string name="test" >test-test</string>
  <string name="test" >test - test</string>

and I would like to replace the en dash with its unicode value, but not all of them, just the one in the string tag

I run several sed with different regex, but I couldn't figured it out. One of those was

sed -i.bak "s/-[^-\<\>0-9]/\&#8211\;/g" strings.xml

the output was:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-&#8211;enerated by-->
  <string name="test" >&#8211;test</string>
  <string name="test2" >test&#8211;est</string>
  <string name="test3" >test &#8211;test</string>

my problem is that is also replacing empty spaces and the first char of the second word. I have not that big experience with regex and sed. Could you please explain me what I am doing wrong?

Note: I'm using OSX.

share|improve this question
    
See unix.stackexchange.com/q/139081/22565 –  Stéphane Chazelas yesterday
    
Take a look at www.rubular.com and plug in your regex expression and XML code. As you know, you do need to tweak your regex code but that website is useful –  ryekayo yesterday
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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

With a recent (for \K and s///r) perl and assuming your <string> tags don't nest:

perl -0777 -pi.bak -e's{<string.*?>\K.*?(?=</string>)}{$&=~s/-/&#8211;/rg}ges' file.xml
  • -0777: slurp mode: handle the whole file at once (to allow <string> tags to span several lines).
  • -p: sed mode
  • -i.bak: in-place editing with .bak extension (BTW, that's where some sed implementations got that idea from)
  • s{...}{...}ges: substitute globally (g), where . matches newline characters as well (s), and treat the replacement as perl code to execute (e).
  • <string.*?>\K.*?</string>: match from <string...> to </string> but don't include the tags themselves in the part that is matched (\K defines where the matched portion starts, and (?=...) is a look-ahead operator that only checks if </string> is there, but doesn't include it in the match).
  • $&=~s/.../.../rg. Do the substitution on the matched part ($&). The r flag is to actually not modify $& but return the substituted string.
share|improve this answer
    
Nice! Why do you say this won't work on nested tags? It does on my system. –  terdon♦ yesterday
    
thank you very much –  blackbelt yesterday
    
@terdon, it won't replace the - in <string><string></string>-</string> –  Stéphane Chazelas yesterday
    
Ah, yes. I saw it would work on <string>-<string>-</string></string> and assumed. –  terdon♦ yesterday
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up vote 3 down vote

Phew, after some time I got it. This is a naive solution. terdon's answer is more correct and you should use his though :).

sed -Ei.bak "s/(.*<string[^>]*\")(.*)-(.*)/\1\2\&#8211;\3/g" strings.xml

I am using Backreferences to refer back to a previously matched string. These are \1 \2 etc.

In this case sed should match following groups:

  • (.*<string[^>]*\") - any characters followed by a string tag opening until a quote ". Group 1
  • (.*) - anything after the " (including right now >) until group 3. Group 2
  • - the matching dash
  • (.*) - anything after the matching dash Group 3

Then I replace it with the previously matched groups and the dash HTML value &#8211;, by using \n with n as the reference to group n.

Problems:

I currently try to fix some problems, so please cope with me:

  1. Group 1 matches also dsfjpasj<string
  2. Group 1 should include the string tag ending character >
  3. As terdon points out: "this won't work for cases where you have >1 - or nested tags or tags spanning multiple lines"

Read more:

http://toytoygogie.blogspot.de/2010/02/using-sed-with-backreference-as.html

share|improve this answer
1  
Note that the format for -i is different for non-GNU sed (the OP is on OSX). Also, this won't work for cases where you have >1 - or nested tags or tags spanning multiple lines. –  terdon♦ yesterday
2  
@terdon, that -Ei.bak syntax will work with FreeBSD/OSX sed. The difference is that the backup extension is optional in GNU sed (and has to be -i.bak, not -i .back) while it's required in FreeBSD/OSX (where both -i.back and -i .back are allowed). But here, since it's provided and is not in the form -i .back, it will work with both GNU and FreeBSD/OSX sed. –  Stéphane Chazelas yesterday
    
thank you very match, I appreciate –  blackbelt yesterday
    
two more questions: It would be much effort make it works for the case with more than 1 "-"? If I would like to replace em dash, can I simply change from (.*)-(.*) to (.*)--(.*) ? –  blackbelt yesterday
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up vote 2 down vote

If I understand correctly, you want to replace all cases (three in your example) of - within <strng></string> tags and only those cases. If so, these approaches should work assuming your XML is sane:

  1. Use a regular expression and a simple tool like sed

    sed 's/\(<string[^>]*>[^-]*\)-\([^-]*<\/string\)/\1\&#8211;\2/' file.xml

  2. If your file is always like the example above and you can be sure that your tags will always be <string name="test" ></string>, you can use lookbehinds:

    perl -pe 's/(?<=<string name="test" >)([^<]*?)-([^<]*)/$1&#8211;$2/g' file.xml

  3. None of the above will work if you have more than a single - within the tags. To deal with such cases, you can write a simple little script that checks whether we're within <string></string> tags. This should also deal with nested tags.

    perl -F'<' -lane 'for($i=0;$i<=$#F;$i++){
    $a++ if $F[$i]=~/^string/; 
    $F[$i]=~s/-/&#8211;/g if $a>0; 
    $a-- if $F[$i]=~/^\/string/
} print join "<",@F' file.xml
share|improve this answer
    
Hi thanks for your answer. I tried the lookbehind solution but it looks like is not supported/implemented in sed osx –  blackbelt yesterday
    
@blackbelt the lookbehind example is using perl, not sed. As far as I know, sed does not support lookarounds. –  terdon♦ yesterday
    
I see, thanks for your reply –  blackbelt yesterday
    
@blackbelt you're welcome :). I suggest you accept Stephane's answer below, it is simpler than mine yet still works for multiline, (some) nested tags and multiple - cases. –  terdon♦ yesterday
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