xml_grep (1) Linux Manual Page
xml_grep – grep XML files looking for specific elements
Synopsys
xml_grep [options] <file list>or
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. exemples:
see XML::Twig for a more complete description of the <cond> syntax
options are processedby 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.