sed is deleting multiple lines when start and end pattern is mentioned

Question

I have a xml file emp.xml

<?xml>
<employee name="abc">ABC</employee>
<employee name="def">DEF</employee>
<!-- abc@gmail.com
this comment is added
to <employee name="gh">
</employee>
-->

?>

I want to delete some employee details from this file. Employee details to be deleted are mentioned in other file delemp.txt abc gh

while read line
do 
i=\"$line\"
echo $i
find . -name "emp.xml" -type f | xargs sed -i -e '/employee name='$i'/,/<\/employee>/d'

done < delemp.txt

I am reading delemp.txt and getting employee details to be deleted and searching for employee name= and employee end tag but this code is not working

Even if I try

sed -i '/employee name=\"abc\"/,/<\/employee>/d' emp.xml

It is deleting first 2 lines i.e name="abc" and "def"

Possible duplicate of [Why it's not possible to use regex to parse HTML/XML: a formal explanation in layman's terms](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6751105/why-its-not-possible-to-use-regex-to-parse-html-xml-a-formal-explanation-in-la) — Cyrus, Apr 03 '19 at 17:23
You don't want to use `sed -z 's##\r#g; s#[^\r]*\r##g;s#/r##g' emp.xml`. It might work for simple files, but will fail when small changes are made in the input (maybe after a month or two). — Walter A, Apr 05 '19 at 10:22

Gilles Quénot · Answer 1 · 2019-04-03T17:20:11.673

0

correcting xml to be valid

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
  <employee name="abc">ABC</employee>
  <employee name="def">DEF</employee>
  <!-- abc@gmail.com
this comment is added
to <employee name="gh">
</employee>
-->
</root>

using xmlstarlet and a proper xpath expression to remove a XML node

xmlstarlet ed -L -d '/root/employee[@name="abc"]' file.xml

result

<?xml version=xmlstarlet ed -L -d '/root/employee[@name="abc"]' file.xml"1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
  <employee name="def">DEF</employee>
  <!-- abc@gmail.com
this comment is added
to <employee name="gh">
</employee>
-->
</root>

finally :

while read name; do
    xmlstarlet ed -L -d "/root/employee[@name='$name']" file.xml
done < names.txt

edited Apr 03 '19 at 17:20

answered Apr 03 '19 at 17:15

Gilles Quénot

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Thankyou. But can't we do it using sed?I cant use xmlstarlet because I need some shell script or perl script – sruthi k Apr 03 '19 at 17:19
1

NO sed is not a XML parser ! – Gilles Quénot Apr 03 '19 at 17:20

Gilles Quénot · Answer 2 · 2019-04-03T17:52:07.870

0

Using perl in command line :

while read name; do
    xml_grep2 -v "/root/emwantedployee[@name='$name']" file.xml > /tmp/new_file.xml &&
        mv /tmp/new_file.xml file.xml
done < names.txt

Using App::Xml_grep2 (to be installed)

edited Apr 03 '19 at 17:52

answered Apr 03 '19 at 17:24