How to extract string between 2 xml tags?

Question

I have a string like this

<anytag>my message</anytag>

How I can extract the message between the tags with sed or awk? So I get only "my message"

I do not want to install xml paser for a lite extract string, my xml message is not complicated — MOHAMED, May 18 '17 at 08:33

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 18 '17 at 14:37

3

try:

awk -F'[><]' '{print $3}'   Input_file

Making field separator as '[><]' and printing 3rd field.

answered May 18 '17 at 14:37

RavinderSingh13

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 18 '17 at 08:33

1

Using xmllint (from libxml2):

xmllint --xpath '//anytag/text()' <(echo "<anytag>my message</anytag>")

answered May 18 '17 at 08:33

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 18 '17 at 08:35

1

sed 's/<.*>\(.*\)<\/.*>/\1/g' file

answered May 18 '17 at 08:35

tso

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 18 '17 at 08:39

I do not want to install xml paser for a lite extract string, my xml message is not complicated

For simple strings you may use the following sed approach:

s="<anytag>my message</anytag>"
sed 's~<[^<>]*>\([^<>]*\)</[^<>]*>~\1~' <<< $s

The output:

my message

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 18 '17 at 14:23

0

You can use the following awk command if each line of your file is in the format you have shown.

awk -F "<[^<]+?>" '{print $2;}' <filename>

Input:

<anytag>my message</anytag> <mytag>abc</mytag>

Output:

my message
abc

answered May 18 '17 at 14:23

rakinhaider

5 Answers5