Copy only Specific text of a file to another

Question

I have a file abc.txt the contents are

<classpathentry kind="src" path="Sources"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/ERExtensions"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/ERJars"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/ERPrototypes"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaEOAccess"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaEOControl"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaFoundation"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaJDBCAdaptor"/>

I want to copy all the paths into another file. That is I want my output text file to look like:

    WOFramework/ERExtensions
    WOFramework/ERJars
    WOFramework/ERPrototypes
    WOFramework/JavaEOAccess
    WOFramework/JavaEOControl
    WOFramework/JavaFoundation
    WOFramework/JavaJDBCAdaptor

Solution 1

I assume the file follows the same pattern. If that is the case, you can have a command like below.

grep -o ' path=.*$' file.txt | cut -c8- |rev | cut -c 4- | rev

So, I open the file using cat and then I extract only the characters from path= and then I remove the unwanted characters using cut and then I use the rev technique to remove unwanted characters from the end.

Another awk approach

awk -F'path="' '{print $2}' file.txt |rev | cut -c 4- | rev

I use the path=" as delimiter and print all the information after it. And the rev basically does the same as above.

Testing

cat file.txt
<classpathentry kind="src" path="Sources"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/ERExtensions"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/ERJars"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/ERPrototypes"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaEOAccess"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaEOControl"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaFoundation"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaJDBCAdaptor"/>

After running the command,

Sources
WOFramework/ERExtensions
WOFramework/ERJars
WOFramework/ERPrototypes
WOFramework/JavaEOAccess
WOFramework/JavaEOControl
WOFramework/JavaFoundation
WOFramework/JavaJDBCAdaptor

A better approach as provided by Stephane in comments.

cut -d '"' -f4 file.txt

Solution 2

A simple approach with awk:

awk -F\" '/WOF/ {print $4}' abc.txt > outfile

• -F\" changes the field separator from the default (a space) to a quote mark (escaped with \)
• /WOF/ restricts the returned results of each record (line of the file) to those that match the pattern: WOF
• $4 is the fourth field for each of those matching records, the path.

Solution 3

sed -n '/.*="con"[^"]*./{s///;s/..>//p}' <<\DATA

<classpathentry kind="src" path="Sources"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/ERExtensions"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/ERJars"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/ERPrototypes"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaEOAccess"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaEOControl"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaFoundation"/>
<classpathentry kind="con" path="WOFramework/JavaJDBCAdaptor"/>
DATA

OUTPUT

WOFramework/ERExtensions
WOFramework/ERJars
WOFramework/ERPrototypes
WOFramework/JavaEOAccess
WOFramework/JavaEOControl
WOFramework/JavaFoundation
WOFramework/JavaJDBCAdaptor

This should get only the WO... stuff, I think. It's also fully portable.

Solution 4

Another approach with grep and cut:

grep "kind=\"con\"" sample.txt | cut -d \" -f 4 > sample_edited.txt

This will grep all lines containing kind="con" and print the paths by setting cut's delimiter to ".

Solution 5

Another solution if your version of grep supports PCRE-style lookarounds

grep -oP '(?<=kind="con" path=").+?(?="/>)' abc.txt

View more solutions

Comments

[Remon]

you want to copy depending on kind?

[Mikel]

Looks like you're trying to extract parts of an XML document. Try an XML tool such as xmlstarlet or xmllint. stackoverflow.com/questions/91791/…

[Stéphane Chazelas]

cut -d '"' -f4?

[Ramesh]

@StephaneChazelas, your answer should be the best solution :)

[mikeserv]

He doesn't want "Sources"

[mikeserv]

Actually, I guess he accepted it - so what do I know?

[text]

sed -e 's/.*path="//' -e 's:".*$::' abc.txt > output_file -- dropping everything after the last quote instead of specific matching at the end.

[Avinash Raj]

it display extra lines.

[Mathias Begert]

@AvinashRaj, where are you seeing extra lines in the OP's input data? The answer above is tailored to the OP's data.

[Avinash Raj]

it displays sources also according to the op's input.