How to use sed to extract substring

linux shell ubuntu xml-parsing sed
MOHAMED picture MOHAMED · May 21, 2013 · Viewed 160.4k times · Source

I have a file containing the following lines:

  <parameter name="PortMappingEnabled" access="readWrite" type="xsd:boolean"></parameter>
  <parameter name="PortMappingLeaseDuration" access="readWrite" activeNotify="canDeny" type="xsd:unsignedInt"></parameter>
  <parameter name="RemoteHost" access="readWrite"></parameter>
  <parameter name="ExternalPort" access="readWrite" type="xsd:unsignedInt"></parameter>
  <parameter name="ExternalPortEndRange" access="readWrite" type="xsd:unsignedInt"></parameter>
  <parameter name="InternalPort" access="readWrite" type="xsd:unsignedInt"></parameter>
  <parameter name="PortMappingProtocol" access="readWrite"></parameter>
  <parameter name="InternalClient" access="readWrite"></parameter>
  <parameter name="PortMappingDescription" access="readWrite"></parameter>

I want to execute command on this file to extract only the parameter names as displayed in the following output:

$sedcommand file.txt
PortMappingEnabled
PortMappingLeaseDuration
RemoteHost
ExternalPort
ExternalPortEndRange
InternalPort
PortMappingProtocol
InternalClient
PortMappingDescription

What could be this command?

Answer

Kent picture Kent · May 21, 2013

grep was born to extract things:

grep -Po 'name="\K[^"]*'

test with your data:

kent$  echo '<parameter name="PortMappingEnabled" access="readWrite" type="xsd:boolean"></parameter>
  <parameter name="PortMappingLeaseDuration" access="readWrite" activeNotify="canDeny" type="xsd:unsignedInt"></parameter>
  <parameter name="RemoteHost" access="readWrite"></parameter>
  <parameter name="ExternalPort" access="readWrite" type="xsd:unsignedInt"></parameter>
  <parameter name="ExternalPortEndRange" access="readWrite" type="xsd:unsignedInt"></parameter>
  <parameter name="InternalPort" access="readWrite" type="xsd:unsignedInt"></parameter>
  <parameter name="PortMappingProtocol" access="readWrite"></parameter>
  <parameter name="InternalClient" access="readWrite"></parameter>
  <parameter name="PortMappingDescription" access="readWrite"></parameter>
'|grep -Po 'name="\K[^"]*'
PortMappingEnabled
PortMappingLeaseDuration
RemoteHost
ExternalPort
ExternalPortEndRange
InternalPort
PortMappingProtocol
InternalClient
PortMappingDescription

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