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I've been using Xmlstarlet to modify some .xml files but I am lost trying to figure out how to modify a tag based on a partial name. What is the best way to comment out an entire line that begins with < and ends with > when the line has a name of spiral in it?

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1 Answer 1

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I would use sed for that task:

sed -r -e 's/^<(.*spiral.*)>$/<!--\1-->/'

Demo: 

$ cat test.xml 
<some line here>
<other spiral line here>
$ sed -i -r -e 's/^<(.*spiral.*)>$/<!--\1-->/' test.xml 
$ cat test.xml 
<some line here>
<!--other spiral line here-->
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