Shell Scripting

Shell Scripting RSS

modifying xml files using sed

•

Join Date: Apr 2008

Posts: 31

Reputation: xyzt is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 0

xyzt

Offline

Light Poster

modifying xml files using sed

Jul 6th, 2009

Hello,

I have lots of xml files in the same format and I need to modify a xml tag in these files.
i loop over the files and apply sed to the files to make the modification but CPU goes to %100 while doing this. I think I'm doing something wrong. Here is my onliner:

•

for f in $( find . -name "*.xml" ); do sed -n "s/<idle>600<\/idle>/<idle>900<\/idle>/p" $f >> $f; echo "file:" $f;done

by the way, I use Linux sed, not Unix sed.(I'm not sure if differs)

thanks in advance...

•

Join Date: Feb 2006

Posts: 2,356

Reputation: masijade has much to be proud of

Solved Threads: 252

masijade

Offline

Nearly a Posting Maven

Re: modifying xml files using sed

Jul 6th, 2009

Do you really want to copy the modified line to the end of the original file so that the same tag exists twice with differing values?

Also, you can avoid having to escape the "/" by using a different separator

Help with Code Tags

Shell Scripting Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)

sed -n 's;<idle>600</idle>;<idle>900</idle>;p'

Also, unless you are using variabls in the sed statement then you are better off using single quotes instead of double quotes.

Last edited by masijade; Jul 6th, 2009 at 12:36 pm.

Java Programmer and Sun Systems Administrator

----------------------------------------------

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
--Brian Kernighan

•

Join Date: Oct 2008

Posts: 95

Reputation: fpmurphy is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 5

fpmurphy

Offline

Junior Poster in Training

Re: modifying xml files using sed

Jul 6th, 2009

Your problem is here

 Help with Code Tags 
 Shell Scripting Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
sed -n "s/<idle>600<\/idle>/<idle>900<\/idle>/p" $f >> $f
sed -n "s/<idle>600<\/idle>/<idle>900<\/idle>/p" $f >> $f

You need to use either the -i option to GNU sed to permit in place editing or save the output to a temporary file and then cp that temporary file to $f.