string replace in huge file

dtdt · July 16, 2012, 7:25pm

I need to parse a huge file... with some strings like this:

I need to change the above to:

<li class="website-feature">http://some.changingurl.com<a href="http://some.changingurl.com" ..(some changing classes)..>

Then later on I can remove all html tags but keep the url saved. Only the url is changing.

Please help me write a subsititution.

Thank you.

---------- Post updated at 07:25 PM ---------- Previous update was at 05:14 PM ----------

anybody help?

agama · July 16, 2012, 9:22pm

Have a go with this. It works for me on the limited example you provided, but it might over match with other lines. It only replaces the first one on each line; if there are multiple sets that need to be replaced it will need at least a small tweak if not more effort.

sed -r 's/<a href="([^["]*)"/\1&/' input-file >new-file

If you are using sed on a BSD machine, or using the sed which is a part of the AT&T AST tools, then use -E instead of -r.

dtdt · July 17, 2012, 2:38pm

Thanks a lot. I am testing it.

agama:

Have a go with this. It works for me on the limited example you provided, but it might over match with other lines. It only replaces the first one on each line; if there are multiple sets that need to be replaced it will need at least a small tweak if not more effort.
sed -r 's/<a href="([^["]*)"/\1&/' input-file >new-file
If you are using sed on a BSD machine, or using the sed which is a part of the AT&T AST tools, then use -E instead of -r.

---------- Post updated 07-17-12 at 02:38 PM ---------- Previous update was 07-16-12 at 09:30 PM ----------

it works! ty