Remove all content between two strings using regular expressions

Question

I am trying to use regular expressions in sublime 3, to remove all the content between two strings, an XML file.

Suppose this is my content:

        <Body name="ground">
            <mass>0</mass>
            <mass_center> 0 0 0</mass_center>
            <inertia_xx>0</inertia_xx>
            <inertia_yy>0</inertia_yy>
            <inertia_zz>0</inertia_zz>
            <inertia_xy>0</inertia_xy>
            <inertia_xz>0</inertia_xz>
            <inertia_yz>0</inertia_yz>
            <!--Joint that connects this body with the parent body.-->
            <Joint />
            <VisibleObject>
                <!--Set of geometry files and associated attributes, allow .vtp, .stl, .obj-->
                <GeometrySet>
                    <objects />
                    <groups />
                </GeometrySet>
                <!--Three scale factors for display purposes: scaleX scaleY scaleZ-->
                <scale_factors> 1 1 1</scale_factors>
                <!--transform relative to owner specified as 3 rotations (rad) followed by 3 translations rX rY rZ tx ty tz-->
                <transform> -0 0 -0 0 0 0</transform>
                <!--Whether to show a coordinate frame-->
                <show_axes>false</show_axes>
                <!--Display Pref. 0:Hide 1:Wire 3:Flat 4:Shaded Can be overriden for individual geometries-->
                <display_preference>4</display_preference>
            </VisibleObject>
            <WrapObjectSet>
                <objects />
                <groups />
            </WrapObjectSet>
        </Body>

Now suppose I want to remove all the content between <VisibleObject> and </VisibleObject> to leave only:

        <Body name="ground">
            <mass>0</mass>
            <mass_center> 0 0 0</mass_center>
            <inertia_xx>0</inertia_xx>
            <inertia_yy>0</inertia_yy>
            <inertia_zz>0</inertia_zz>
            <inertia_xy>0</inertia_xy>
            <inertia_xz>0</inertia_xz>
            <inertia_yz>0</inertia_yz>
            <!--Joint that connects this body with the parent body.-->
            <Joint />
            <VisibleObject>
            </VisibleObject>
            <WrapObjectSet>
                <objects />
                <groups />
            </WrapObjectSet>
        </Body>

There are a few similar threads and problems, to the above but none of them seem to work particularly well (or at all) for this problem.

Any help would be most appreciated.

With Notepad++, you can use XSLT transformations, and easily modify any XML. Not sure if Sublime Text supports modifying XML files with XSLT. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Aug 15 '16 at 19:22
Indeed, as @WiktorStribiżew mentions, this can easily be handled with XSLT running an identity transform and then re-writing the `` element. Also, it is highly advised not to use regex on [X/HTML documents](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags). — Parfait, Aug 15 '16 at 21:14

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 15 '16 at 20:59

3

An image with the sublime window:

You can find it via Find, then Replace and make sure you tick the most outer left options.

answered Aug 15 '16 at 20:59

Jan

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 15 '16 at 20:11

Sublime appears to use PCRE, according to this page.

That means that you should be able to use the cool tricks PCRE offers (mostly negative look-ahead). This can speed up performance considerably.

The regex I recommend is:

<VisibleObject>(?:[^<]*(?!</VisibleObject).)+</VisibleObject>

Essentially, the negative look-ahead ensures that whenever a < is present (namely at the start of a tag), it's not the closing </VisibleObject>.

The . is needed so that the engine can backtrack one character when the negative look-ahead sees the closing tag.

You will need to use the replacement <VisibleObject></VisibleObject>.

Remove all content between two strings using regular expressions

2 Answers2

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