SED - Create mailto: link

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Help!
I am using sed to convert text files into easily viewed html tables.
I have managed all except converting the email addresses to mailto: links.
Multiple email addresses exist within the files, either preceded by a space or > (as part of HTML tag), and followed by either space or <
I've tried various things based around the below, but nothing seems to work.
sed -e "s|\w+@\w+\.\w+(\.\w+)?|<a href=\"mailto:\0\">\0</a>|g" nolinks.html > links.html

I am using super-sed 3.62 on an XP machine. (Sorry!!)

Can anyone please help?
Thanks
Nigel

2

Can you post sample email addresses and the required output format..?
Please wrap your sample files/lines within the CODE tag-icon available in the tool bar while posting reply.

3

Hi,
Thanks for your quick response.
mail addresses will be from domains such as domain.co.uk, domain.org.uk domain.com.
users could be name@ or firstname.lastname@. it is unlikely that anyone would have an apostrophe in the name.
For example: the text username@domain.org.uk would be converted to <A HREF="mailto:username@domain.org.uk"&gt;username@domain.org.uk&lt;/A> in the output file.

Nigel

4

Try..

echo 'username@domain.org.uk' | sed -n 's|[^ ]*@[^ ]*|<A HREF="mailto:&">&</A>|gp'

If the above did not help post few lines of your HTML file.

1 Like
5

Hi

Due to the limitations of the windows version needing double quotes I substituted:

echo username@domain.org.uk | sed -n "s|[^ ]*@[^ ]*|<A HREF=\"mailto:&\">&</A>|gp"

This returned sed: -e expression #1, char 30: unterminated `s' command

The working command I use to create hyperlinks is

sed -e "s|http[:]//[^<]*|<a href=\"\0\" style=\'text-decoration: none; color: blue; font-weight: bold;\'>\Details Here</a>|g" table.html > newtable.html

so I know that \" works within the command.

From a typical file:

<BR>For information contact
   Emma on 01000 055530 / 0777777777 or emma@domain.org.uk</A><BR><BR>Choose
   from

Thanks
Nigel

6

Sorted it!

I found the solution at launchpad.net:

adding the -r switch to my original code gave the working solution

Thanks for your time and help.

Nigel