Regular expression find and replace

Question

I have a really poorly formatted XML file and I am looking to replace the names of some of the tags.

For example...

<column name="id">1</column>

should become

<id>1</id>

I have over 7000 entries and don't fancy doing this by hand. I am using Dreamweaver's Find & Replace. Obviously the value "1" in the example is a dynamic value.

Cheers for any help...

If you have some knowledge of XSLT, it could be done with a stylesheet (I dare not say "simple", I have never managed to write one in less than 30 minutes...) — fge
– fge, Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 15:00

NobRuked · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-04 14:50:10Z

2

Find:

<column name="id">(\d+)</column>

Replace with

<id>$1</id>

Make sure you check Use regular expression in the dialog box.

See further on Adobe's site.

answered Jan 4, 2012 at 14:50

NobRuked

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4 Comments

Sergey Kalinichenko Over a year ago

More likely, the OP was looking for <column name="([^"]+)">(\d+)</column> to be replaced by <$1>$2</$1>, but the direction looks correct.

jayfield1979 Over a year ago

You are both correct. Thanks for the accurate and speedy reply guys.

fge Over a year ago

Yep, generalizing with the above solution looks like the way to go

NobRuked Over a year ago

Taking it one step further, I suppose <column name="([^"]+)">([^<])</column> replaced with <$1>$2</$1> is the way to go.

Raihan · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-04 15:00:43Z

0

Search for: <column name="id">(.*)</column> Replace with: <id>\1</id>

answered Jan 4, 2012 at 15:00

Raihan

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Comments

Paul Joireman · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-04 15:05:36Z

0

A simple python solution, probably easier using Perl:

import re        # regular expression
import sys       # command line arguments

pat = re.compile(r'<column name=\"id\">(\d*)</column>', re.IGNORECASE)

if __name__=='__main__':
    filename = sys.argv[1]

     for line in open(filename):
         matchObj = pat.search(line)
         if matchObj != None:
             s"<id>" + matchObj.group(1) + "</id>"
         else:
             print line

answered Jan 4, 2012 at 15:05

Paul Joireman

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