Loop string text replacement

[adamdidthis]

Hi all,

I have the following string:

<REQUEST><KEY_HEADER><STATUS>CREATE</STATUS><TIME_CODE>0</TIME_CODE><COUNT>344</COUNT><TARGET>8</TARGET></KEY_HEADER><KEY_INFO><NAME>TEAMLIST</NAME><ARGS>97</ARGS><ARG>COACH: XXX</ARG><ARG>Crusaders</ARG><ARG>WHITE</ARG><ARG>BLACK</ARG><ARG>Crusaders</ARG><ARG>WYATT</ARG><ARG>CROCKETT</ARG><ARG>JASON</ARG><ARG>MacDONALD</ARG><ARG>OWEN</ARG><ARG>FRANKS</ARG><ARG>BRAD</ARG><ARG>THORN</ARG><ARG>ISAAC</ARG><ARG>ROSS</ARG><ARG>KIERAN</ARG><ARG>READ</ARG><ARG>RICHIE</ARG><ARG>McCAW</ARG><ARG>THOMAS</ARG><ARG>WALDROM</ARG><ARG>ANDY</ARG><ARG>ELLIS</ARG><ARG>STEPHEN</ARG><ARG>BRETT</ARG><ARG>ADAM</ARG><ARG>WHITELOCK</ARG><ARG>RYAN</ARG><ARG>CROTTY</ARG><ARG>TIM</ARG><ARG>BATEMAN</ARG><ARG>JARED</ARG><ARG>PAYNE</ARG><ARG>LEON</ARG><ARG>MacDONALD</ARG><ARG>DANIEL</ARG><ARG>PERRIN</ARG><ARG>BRONSON</ARG><ARG>MURRAY</ARG><ARG>MICHAEL</ARG><ARG>PATERSON</ARG><ARG>JONATHON</ARG><ARG>POFF</ARG><ARG>KAHN</ARG><ARG>FOTUALI'I</ARG><ARG>SEAN</ARG><ARG>MAITLAND</ARG><ARG>HAMISH</ARG><ARG>GARD</ARG><ARG> </ARG><ARG> </ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG></ARG><ARG> </ARG><ARG>1</ARG><ARG>2</ARG><ARG>3</ARG><ARG>4</ARG><ARG>5</ARG><ARG>6</ARG><ARG>7</ARG><ARG>8</ARG><ARG>9</ARG><ARG>10</ARG><ARG>11</ARG><ARG>12</ARG><ARG>13</ARG><ARG>14</ARG><ARG>15</ARG><ARG>16</ARG><ARG>17</ARG><ARG>18</ARG><ARG>19</ARG><ARG>20</ARG><ARG>21</ARG><ARG>22</ARG><ARG> </ARG></KEY_INFO></REQUEST>

Yep I know it's a mess but it's the only way I can receive it.

What I need to do is loop through the string and change ARG to be ARG then a number e.g.

<ARG>14</ARG> changes to <ARG1>14</ARG1>

Does this make sense and is it even possible?

[vegaseat]

Python would make this easily possible, but you need to tell us if ARG always turns into ARG1, or is the next ARG a ARG2 and so on?

[adamdidthis]

Python would make this easily possible, but you need to tell us if ARG always turns into ARG1, or is the next ARG a ARG2 and so on?

Yep I should end up with ARG1, ARG2 etc, sorry I should have made that clearer

[slate]

A pragmatic one time solution:
The test.txt contains the above string.

st=open("test.txt").read()
delimiter="><"
tokens=st.split(delimiter)
fo=open("test_out.txt","w")
count=1
for line in tokens:
    if line.startswith("ARG") and line.endswith("ARG"):
        firstarg=line.find("ARG")+3
        line=line[:firstarg]+str(count)+line[firstarg:]+str(count)
        count+=1
    fo.write(line)
    fo.write(delimiter)#FIXME last delimiter is too much
fo.close()