Create simple script

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Dear all,

I have a directory named A and some subdirectories named B, C, D with .xml files. I want to use the following command to strip the file.

sed -re ':start s/<[^>]*>//g; /</ {N; b start}' file.xml > file.xml

At the same time, I want to remove the blank lines using

sed '/^$/d'

How can I create a simple script for all files?

2

Doesn't work that way. You shouldn't write to the same file you're reading, you'll truncate it.

If your sed's work, then:

for FILE in *.xml
do
        sed -re ':start s/<[^>]*>//g; /</ {N; b start}' "$FILE" > /tmp/$$
        sed '/^$/d' < /tmp/$$ > "$FILE".new
done

rm -f /tmp/$$

Remove the '.new' once you've tested it and are sure it does what you want. It's all too easy to destroy your originals by accident when you edit them automatically.

3

thank you. It works, but with some problems! The script removes the tags bat not the blank lines.

Could you tell me also how can I proccess the xml files in the subdirectories?
Thank you in advance.

4

Are you sure they're actually blank? They could have a single space or something.

find . -iname '*.xml' | while read FILE
do
        sed -re ':start s/<[^>]*>//g; /</ {N; b start}' "$FILE" > /tmp/$$
        sed '/^[ \t]*$/d' < /tmp/$$ > "$FILE".new
done
5

Thank you! It works! The lines seems to be empty, but when I am trying to open them with vi, there is ^M character. Do you know how can I remove it?
Thanks a lot for your help.

6 
find . -iname '*.xml' | while read FILE
do
        sed -re ':start s/<[^>]*>//g; /</ {N; b start}' "$FILE" > /tmp/$$
        tr -d '\r' | sed '/^[ \t]*$/d' < /tmp/$$ > "$FILE".new
done
7

Thank you very much for your helping. I tried and it works! Could you tell me please how the new file can be created in a other location. For example, I have the main dir, called DIR1 with subdirs called EX1, EX2, A1, A2 ....The xml files are located in subdirs. This dir is on C drive. I want to create a new dir named DIR1 with the same stucture and only the new files in F drive.

Thank you in advance!