Find line in text file, check for text in between?

Question

Question about Batch/Windows/CMD:

I would like that my batch file can search for a line (which I already achieved, but what comes next not), it looks like this:

<name>MyName</name>

It needs to find the text in between <name> and </name>. After that it needs to set that as a variable (%name%).

Does anyone have any idea?

EDIT: if someone wants to give an answer, please list the code. Perl is OK, but this should be open-source and not everyone has Perl.

Answer 1

Learn Perl, it's made for exactly that kind of thing.

Answer 2

It can be done this way (assuming your input is in file "test1.html"):

findstr "<name>" test1.html > temp1.lis
FOR /F "tokens=2 delims=>" %%i in (temp1.lis) do @echo %%i > temp2.lis
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=<" %%i in (temp2.lis) do @echo %%i > temp3.lis

The first line is a guard that only HTML/XML tag "name" will match in the two FOR lines (you may already have done this). The result is saved in a temporary file, "temp1.lis".

The second line capture what is to the right of the first ">" - in effect what is after "<name>". At this stage "MyName</name" is left in temporary file "temp2.lis" (as the closing tag also contains ">"). Note the double "%"s (%%i) as this is in a BAT file (if you want to test directly from the command line then it should only be one "%").

The third line capture what is to the left of the first "<" - this is the desired result: "MyName" (is left of "<" in "MyName</name"). The result is in variable %%i and you can call a function with %%i as a parameter and access the result in that function (in the FOR line above the function was the built-in "echo" and the result thus ended up in temporary file "temp3.lis" by the redirection of standard output)

---

Note that the above only works if

<name>MyName</name>

is the first HTML/XML tag in a line.

If that is not the case or you want a more robust solution you can instead call a function in the first FOR line (that receives %%i as the first parameter). That function can then replace "<name>" with a single character that you are sure is not in the input, e.g.:

set RLINE=%MYLINE:<name>=£%

Explanation: if the input line is in variable %MYLINE% then "<name>" will be replaced with "£" and the result will be assigned to variable %RLINE%.

The reason for the replace is that the delimiters for the FOR loop are single character only.

You can then use "£" as a delimiter in the FOR loop (to extract what is to the right of "<name>" - as before):

echo %RLINE%>temp5.lis
FOR /F "tokens=2 delims=£" %%i in (temp5.lis) do @echo %%i > temp6.lis

You have to repeat this technique for "</name>" (but only if <name>MyName</name> is not the first HTML/XML tag in a line).

So as you see it is possible, but is quite painful.