Parsing XML files with regular expressions (Perl)

Question

Hi,

I am using regular expression to parse XML file (though regexp is not recommended for xml parsing, but i have to use regexp, no other go).

My doubt is how to skip commented lines in XML file, while parsing using Perl.

I want Perl to parse XML file, while skipping commented lines.

Can anyone help me, please.

Thanks Senthil .

Answer 1

One way to do it is to strip commented lines prior to parsing.

$string =~ s/<!--.*?-->//gs;

Answer 2

Please, do not parse XML with regular expressions, use XML parser instead.

At least you can write a simple finite-state machine based parser to process your XML. It's very simple to do it.

Answer 3

If your problem is compiling XML libraries, you can try XML::Parser::Lite or XML::Parser::PurePerl which are pure perl modules requiring no compilation.

Or, you might be able to find pre-compiled packages of the non-pure-perl libraries. What OS are you on?

Answer 4

As bad as this question is for many people, many answers to it are just as bad: use an XML parser, here's why, end of the discussion.

For me, the whole point of asking a question on stackoverflow is to obtain a solution. Have we provided a solution to OP? Not quite.

A more complete answer would offer some examples on how to parse xml. Here are some;

Can you provide an example of parsing HTML with your favorite parser?