grep 2 text strings and extract them to the SAME line of output?

[BBLuv]

Hi - non technical user here, proud to have figured out part of my goal.

I have multiple XML files that I am trying to scan through to pluck out instances of tag attributes. The XML looks like this, and I want to extract the NAME and LIKES  attributes across the files.

<ANIMAL NAME="Fluffy" SPECIES="dog" LIKES="bones" AGE="6">

Using grep + extract I am able to produce this:

search = (?<=NAME=").*?(?=")|(?<=LIKES=").*?(?=")

output =

Fluffy

bones

Tiger

chewtoys

Rusty

mailmen

           

I would love output that includes my own text:

Fluffy -- bones

Tiger -- chewtoys

Rusty -- mailmen

or at least has the output values in one line per XML tag

Fluffy bones

Tiger chewtoys

Rusty mailmen

I learned the pipe character lets me make multiple extractions but I am not able to control the output.

Can you help?

Thanking you...

[jj]

Hi BBLuv,

Find: 

    <ANIMAL[^>]+NAME="([^"]*)"[^>]+LIKES="([^"]*)"[^>]*>

Replace:

    \1 -- \2

and use the Extract button of the find window.

HTH

Jean Jourdain

[BBLuv]

Appreciated Jean! It works as if miraculous. If you would accept a further challenge: how can the expression also find instances when only one of the attributes is present? bonus challenge: and if the attributes are not in that order?

Great big thanks

[jj]

Find:

    <ANIMAL[^>]+?(?:NAME="([^"]+)"[^>]+LIKES="([^"]+)"|LIKES="([^"]+)"[^>]+NAME="([^"]+)"|(?:NAME|LIKES)="([^"]+)")[^>]*>

    

Replace:

    \1 \2 \4 \3 \5

    

Test data :

    <ANIMAL NAME="Fluffy" SPECIES="dog" LIKES="bones" AGE="6">

    <ANIMAL LIKES="Banana" NAME="Abu" SPECIES="Monkey" AGE="6">

    <ANIMAL NAME="Fluffy" SPECIES="dog" LIKES="" AGE="6">

    <ANIMAL LIKES="Banana" NAME="" SPECIES="Monkey" AGE="6">

    <ANIMAL AGE="6" NAME="Peter" SPECIES="Rabbit" >

    <ANIMAL SPECIES="Rabbit" AGE="6" LIKES="Carrots">

Extract:

    Fluffy bones   

      Abu Banana 

        Fluffy

        Banana

        Peter

        Carrots

In case you will want to remove the leading spaces.

Find:

    ^\s+

Replace:

    <empty>

    

If it gets more complicated than that maybe you should go for more advanced XML parsing tools.

Regular expressions are not the best fit for those cases.

HTH

Jean Jourdain

[BBLuv]

You are a grandmaster JJ

Merci!