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up vote 1 down vote favorite

INPUT: 

<tr><td>FOOBAAR</td><td>FOOO</td><td>BAAR</td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-02-14 13:34</font></td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-02-17 13:34</font></td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-03-07 13:34</font></td></tr>

OUTPUT: 

<tr><td>FOOBAAR</td><td>FOOO</td><td>BAAR</td><td>2014-02-14 13:34</td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-02-17 13:34</font></td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-03-07 13:34</font></td></tr>

Difference: the: 

<font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>

and

</font>

was removed only from the fourth column.

My question: How can I remove only given strings from given column?

</td><td>

is the delimiter

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4 Answers 4

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I'd recommend an HTML parsing tool instead of using regular expressions. (Famous answer explaining why here)

Here's an example of using an XML parser (note: requires the input to be well-formed XML, which your sample HTML is not)

# change the value of the style attribute of the font tag of the 4th td tag 
# to the empty string
xmlstarlet ed -O -u '//table/tr/td[4]/font[@style]/@style' -v "" <<END
<html><head></head><body><table>
<tr><td>FOOBAAR</td><td>FOOO</td><td>BAAR</td><td><font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR:red">2014-02-14 13:34</font></td><td><font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR:red">2014-02-17 13:34</font></td><td><font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR:red">2014-03-07 13:34</font></td></tr>
</table></body></html>
END

<html>
  <head/>
  <body>
    <table>
      <tr>
        <td>FOOBAAR</td>
        <td>FOOO</td>
        <td>BAAR</td>
        <td>
          <font style="">2014-02-14 13:34</font>
        </td>
        <td>
          <font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR:red">2014-02-17 13:34</font>
        </td>
        <td>
          <font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR:red">2014-03-07 13:34</font>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>
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Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was just about to comment about what you mention in your first paragraph when I scrolled down to your answer. +1 –  0xC0000022L Jun 4 '14 at 2:37
up vote 2 down vote

This could work..

#!/bin/sh

# replace specific strings from the fourth column
INSTRING="<tr><td>FOOBAAR</td><td>FOOO</td><td>BAAR</td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-02-14 13:34</font></td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-02-17 13:34</font></td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-03-07 13:34</font></td></tr>"

DEL_STRING1="<font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>"
DEL_STRING2="</font>"
DELIM="</td><td>"
OUT_FIRST=`echo $INSTRING | awk -F $DELIM '{print $1,$2,$3,$4}' OFS="</td><td>"`
OUT_FIRST=`echo $OUT_FIRST | awk -F "$DEL_STRING1" '{print $1,$2}' OFS=""`
OUT_FIRST=`echo $OUT_FIRST | awk -F "$DEL_STRING2" '{print $1}'`
OUT_LAST=`echo $INSTRING | awk -F $DELIM '{print substr($0, index($0,$5))}' OFS=$DELIM`
echo "$OUT_FIRST$DELIM$OUT_LAST"

Hope this helps..

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up vote 1 down vote

Awk one-liner command,

$ awk -F '<\/td><td>' 'BEGIN{OFS=FS;} {gsub (/<font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>/,"",$4); gsub (/<\/font>/,"",$4);}1' file 2>/dev/null
<tr><td>FOOBAAR</td><td>FOOO</td><td>BAAR</td><td>2014-02-14 13:34</td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-02-17 13:34</font></td><td><font style=BACKGROUND-COLOR:red>2014-03-07 13:34</font></td></tr>
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up vote 1 down vote 
sed 's|</td><td>|</td>\nTGT_LINE_MARKER<td>|4' |
sed '\|TGT_LINE_MARKER|{function applied to target field}'
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