Using SED Editing single xml element and splitting into two?

Question

I've currently got the following xml but have trouble processing as date and time contained within a single element.

<data>
    <StartDateTime>2019-10-19T12:00:00Z</StartDateTime>
</data>

but want it output as:

<data>
   <date>2019-10-19</date>
   <time>12:00:00Z</time>
</data>

Is it possible using sed to alter this?

[You can't parse \[X\]HTML with regex](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/3776858) I suggest to use an XML/HTML parser (xmlstarlet, e.g.). — Cyrus, Oct 17 '19 at 17:11

ProXicT · Answer 1 · 2019-10-17T18:16:59.457

@Cyrus is right when he says that [X]HTML cannot be parsed with a regex.

But if you are sure the input will always look like this, and since the input isn't as complex, you can, in fact, do it with sed:

sed -E 's|<StartDateTime>([0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2})T([0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}[A-Z])</StartDateTime>|<date>\1</date>\n    <time>\2</time>|g'

This expression uses capturing groups which you can later reference in the substitution with '\' followed by the index of the group, \1 and \2 in this case.

Using SED Editing single xml element and splitting into two?

1 Answers1