XML_GREP

Section: User Contributed Perl Documentation (1)
Updated: 2021-01-27
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NAME

xml_grep - grep XML files looking for specific elements

SYNOPSYS

  xml_grep [options] <file list>

  xml_grep <xpath expression> <file list>

By default you can just give "xml_grep" an XPath expression and a list of files, and get an XML file with the result.

This is equivalent to writing

  xml_grep --group_by_file file --pretty_print indented --cond <file list>

OPTIONS

--help

brief help message

--man

full documentation

--Version

display the tool version

--root <cond>

look for and return xml chunks matching <cond>

if neither "--root" nor "--file" are used then the element(s) that trigger the "--cond" option is (are) used. If "--cond" is not used then all elements matching the <cond> are returned

several "--root" can be provided

--cond <cond>

return the chunks (or file names) only if they contain elements matching <cond>

several "--cond" can be provided (in which case they are OR'ed)

--files

return only file names (do not generate an XML output)

usage of this option precludes using any of the options that define the XML output: "--roots", "--encoding", "--wrap", "--group_by_file" or "--pretty_print"

--count

return only the number of matches in each file

usage of this option precludes using any of the options that define the XML output: "--roots", "--encoding", "--wrap", "--group_by_file" or "--pretty_print"

--strict

without this option parsing errors are reported to STDOUT and the file skipped

--date

when on (by default) the wrapping element get a "date" attribute that gives the date the tool was run.

with "--nodate" this attribute is not added, which can be useful if you need to compare 2 runs.

--encoding <enc>

encoding of the xml output (utf-8 by default)

--nb_results <nb>

output only <nb> results

--by_file

output only <nb> results by file

--wrap <tag>

wrap the xml result in the provided tag (defaults to 'xml_grep')

If wrap is set to an empty string ("--wrap ''") then the xml result is not wrapped at all.

--nowrap

same as using "--wrap ''": the xml result is not wrapped.

--descr <string>

attributes of the wrap tag (defaults to "version="<VERSION>" date="<date>"")

--group_by_file <optional_tag>

wrap results for each files into a separate element. By default that element is named "file". It has an attribute named "filename" that gives the name of the file.

the short version of this option is -g

--exclude <condition>

same as using "-v" in grep: the elements that match the condition are excluded from the result, the input file(s) is (are) otherwise unchanged

the short form of this option is -v

--pretty_print <optional_style>

pretty print the output using XML::Twig styles ('"indented"', '"record"' or '"record_c"' are probably what you are looking for)

if the option is used but no style is given then '"indented"' is used

short form for this argument is -s

--text_only

Displays the text of the results, one by line.

--html

Allow HTML input, files are converted using HTML::TreeBuilder

--Tidy

Allow HTML input, files are converted using HTML::Tidy

Condition Syntax

<cond> is an XPath-like expression as allowed by XML::Twig to trigger handlers.

examples:
  'para'
  'para[@compact=``compact'']'
  '*[@urgent]'
  '*[@urgent=``1'']'
  'para[string()=``WARNING'']'

see XML::Twig for a more complete description of the <cond> syntax

options are processed by Getopt::Long so they can start with '-' or '--' and can be abbreviated ("-r" instead of "--root" for example)

DESCRIPTION

xml_grep does a grep on XML files. Instead of using regular expressions it uses XPath expressions (in fact the subset of XPath supported by XML::Twig)

the results can be the names of the files or XML elements containing matching elements.

LICENSE

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

Michel Rodriguez <mirod@xmltwig.com>