Batch Find and Copy Lines

Question

I need to strip a part of a text file and write it to another one. The stripped text file should be saved as well.

Before:

Original.txt = "<xml><something>values</something><script>TEXT-TO-DELETE</script></xml>"

After:

Original.txt = "<xml><something>values</something><script></script></xml>"

Original_script.txt = "TEXT-TO-DELETE"

.. this is a multi-line file, so the script section is spanning many lines.

I tried from scripts that were posted, but can never understand the syntax.

"@echo off & setlocal 
set "Data=D:\Original.txt" 
set "Bak=%Data%.bak" 
move "%Data%" "%Bak%" 
for /f "usebackq delims=" %%i in ("%Bak%") do set "LINE=%%i" & call :ProcessLine 
REM del "%Bak%" 
goto :eof 
:ProcessLine 
echo %LINE%>>"%Data%"
echo %LINE%|findstr /b "<script>">nul || goto :eof 
goto :eof"

This should be for windows computers .. (newer OS support)

EDIT: since i cannot answer on my own thread, I do it here:

Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately I don't want to use shareware for this. I am parsing in another language, I just need to strip this.

This is a ridiculous 3-liner:

file={"p1.txt","p2.txt","p1.txt"}
find={"<search>","</search>,"<xml>"}
count=1
foreachline in file[count] print line to file[count]
if find[count] in line then count++

or similar. If there wouldn't be 1000 ways/styles of scripting, I could figure this myself. Just thought some crack would give it a minute.

Answer 1

I think an XSLT processor with a CLI is the most appropriate tool here. AltovaXML2011 is the one I use most frequently now.

The script can then be something like this, to extract the contents of the script elements to your Original_script file, and then update your original file:

@echo off
set orig="D:\Original.txt"
set script="D:\Original_script.txt"
set backup="D:\Original_backup.txt"
set xsltprocessor="D:\AltovaXML.exe"
move %orig% %backup%
::extract scripts
%xsltprocessor% -xslt1 "D:\ExtractScripts.xslt" -in %backup% -out %script%
::update original
%xsltprocessor% -xslt1 "D:\UpdateOriginal.xslt" -in %backup% -out %orig%
::del %backup%

With ExtractScripts.xslt looking like this, it extracts the contents of all script elements (adding newlines):

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="text" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:apply-templates select="//script"/>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="//script">
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
        <xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

With UpdateOriginal.xslt looking like this, it just copies the entire original file but leaves out the contents of all script elements (already separately extracted):

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="@*|node()">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="//script">
        <xsl:copy/>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

You can choose to keep or delete the backup file afterwards.