change string in file between two strings with character X [duplicate]

Answer 1

Provisional solution

This extends the 'initial offering' below and handles cases 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9. It does not handle the case where there is one or more complete <Name>…</Name> entries and also a starting <Name> without the matching </Name> on the same line. Frankly, I'm not even sure how to start tackling that scenario.

The unhandled cases 3, 4, 7 are not valid XML — I'm not convinced they're valid HTML (or XHTML) either. I believe they can be handled by a similar (but simpler) mechanism to the one shown here for the full <Name>…</Name> version. I'm leaving that as an exercise for the reader (beware the < in the character class — it would need to become a /).

script.sed

/<Name>/! b
/<Name>.*<\/Name>/{
: l1
s/\(<Name>[[:space:]]*\(X[X[[:space:]]*\)\{0,1\}\)[^X<[:space:]]\(.*[[:space:]]*<\/Name>\)/\1X\3/
t l1
b
}
/<Name>/,/<\/Name>/{
  # Handle up to 4 lines to the end-name tag
  /<\/Name>/! N
  /<\/Name>/! N
  /<\/Name>/! N
  /<\/Name>/! N
# s/^/ZZ/; s/$/AA/p
# s/^ZZ//; s/AA$//
  : l2
  s/\(<Name>[[:space:]]*\(X[X[[:space:]]*\)\{0,1\}\)[^X<[:space:]]\(.*[[:space:]]*<\/Name>\)/\1X\3/
  t l2
}

The first line 'skips' processing of lines not containing <Name> (they get printed and the next line is read). The next 6 lines are the script from the 'initial offering' except that there's a b to jump to the end of processing.

The new section is the /<Name>/,/<\/Name>/ code. This looks for <Name> on its own, and concatenates up to 4 lines until a </Name> is included in the pattern space. The two comment lines were used for debugging — they allowed me to see what was being treated as a unit. Except for the use of the label l2 in place of l1, the remainder is exactly the same as in the initial offering — sed regexes already accommodate newlines.

This is heavy-duty sed scripting and not what I'd want to use or maintain. I would go with a Perl solution using an XML parser (because I know Perl better than Python), but Python would do the job fine too with an appropriate XML parser.

data

A slightly extended data file.

<Name> Jason </Name>
<Name>Jim</Name>
<Name> Jason Bourne </Name>
<Name> Elijah </Name> <Name> Dennis </Name>
<Name> Elijah Wood </Name> <Name> Dennis The Menace </Name>
<Name>Elijah Wood</Name> <Name>Dennis The Menace</Name>
<Name> Jason
        </Name>
<Name>
    Jim</Name>
<Name>
    Jim
        </Name>
<Name> Jason
Bourne </Name>
<Name> 
    Jason
        Bourne
            </Name>
<Name> Elijah </Name>
<Name>
Dennis
</Name>
<Name> Elijah
Wood </Name>
            <Name> Dennis
The Menace </Name>
<Name>Elijah
Wood</Name>
    <Name>Dennis The
Menace</Name>



<Name> Jason </Name>
to
<Name> XXXXX </Name>

2. (see no space)

 <Name>Jim</Name>
 to
 <Name>XXX</Name>

3.

<!--Name Jason /--> 
to 
<!--Name XXXXX /-->`

4.

<!--Name Jas /-->
to
<!--Name XXX /-->

starting tag, value and closing tag can all come in different line

5.

<Name>Jim
</Name>
to
<Name>XXX
</Name>

6.

<Name>
     Jim
       </Name>
to
<Name>
     XXX
       </Name>

7.

  <!--Name
     Jim
       /-->
to
  <!--Name
     XXX
       /-->

8.

<Name> Jason </Name> <Name> Ignacio </Name>
to
<Name> XXXXX </Name> <Name> XXXXXX </Name>

9.

<Name> Jason Ignacio </Name>
to
<Name> XXXXX XXXXXXX </Name>
or
<Name> XXXXXXXXXXXXX </Name>

No claims are made that the data file contains a minimal set of cases; it is repetitious. It includes the material from the question, except that the 'unorthodox' XML elements like <Name Value /> are converted into XML comments <!--Name Value /-->. The mapping actually isn't crucial; the opening part doesn't match <Name> (and the tail doesn't match </Name>) so they'd not be processed anyway.

Output

$ sed -f script.sed data
<Name> XXXXX </Name>
<Name>XXX</Name>
<Name> XXXXX XXXXXX </Name>
<Name> XXXXXX </Name> <Name> XXXXXX </Name>
<Name> XXXXXX XXXX </Name> <Name> XXXXXX XXX XXXXXX </Name>
<Name>XXXXXX XXXX</Name> <Name>XXXXXX XXX XXXXXX</Name>
<Name> XXXXX
        </Name>
<Name>
    XXX</Name>
<Name>
    XXX
        </Name>
<Name> XXXXX
XXXXXX </Name>
<Name> 
    XXXXX
        XXXXXX
            </Name>
<Name> XXXXXX </Name>
<Name>
XXXXXX
</Name>
<Name> XXXXXX
XXXX </Name>
            <Name> XXXXXX
XXX XXXXXX </Name>
<Name>XXXXXX
XXXX</Name>
    <Name>XXXXXX XXX
XXXXXX</Name>



<Name> XXXXX </Name>
to
<Name> XXXXX </Name>

2. (see no space)

 <Name>XXX</Name>
 to
 <Name>XXX</Name>

3.

<!--Name Jason /--> 
to 
<!--Name XXXXX /-->`

4.

<!--Name Jas /-->
to
<!--Name XXX /-->

starting tag, value and closing tag can all come in different line

5.

<Name>XXX
</Name>
to
<Name>XXX
</Name>

6.

<Name>
     XXX
       </Name>
to
<Name>
     XXX
       </Name>

7.

  <!--Name
     Jim
       /-->
to
  <!--Name
     XXX
       /-->

8.

<Name> XXXXX </Name> <Name> XXXXXXX </Name>
to
<Name> XXXXX </Name> <Name> XXXXXX </Name>

9.

<Name> XXXXX XXXXXXX </Name>
to
<Name> XXXXX XXXXXXX </Name>
or
<Name> XXXXXXXXXXXXX </Name>
$

---

Initial offering

A partial answer — but it illustrates the problems you face. Dealing with cases 1 & 2 in the question, plus the multi-word variations, you can use the script:

script.sed

/<Name>.*<\/Name>/{
: l1
s/\(<Name>[[:space:]]*\(X[X[[:space:]]*\)\{0,1\}\)[^X<[:space:]]\(.*[[:space:]]*<\/Name>\)/\1X\3/
t l1
}

That is pretty contorted, to be polite about it. It looks for <Name> followed by zero or more spaces. That can be followed by \(X[X[[:space:]]*\)\{0,1\}, which means zero or one occurrences of an X followed by a sequence of X's or spaces. All of that is captured as \1 in the replacement. Then there's a single character that isn't an X, < or space, followed by zero or more any characters, zero or more spaces, and </Name>. The single character in the middle is replaced by an X. The whole replacement is repeated until there are no more matches via the label : l1 and the conditional branch t l1. All that operates only on a line with both <Name> and </Name>.

data

<Name> Jason </Name>
<Name>Jim</Name>
<Name> Jason Bourne </Name>
<Name> Elijah </Name> <Name> Dennis </Name>
<Name> Elijah Wood </Name> <Name> Dennis The Menace </Name>
<Name>Elijah Wood</Name> <Name>Dennis The Menace</Name>
<Name> Jason
</Name>
<Name>
Jim</Name>
<Name> Jason
Bourne </Name>
<Name> Elijah </Name> <Name> Dennis
</Name>
<Name> Elijah
Wood </Name> <Name> Dennis
The Menace </Name>
<Name>Elijah
Wood</Name> <Name>Dennis The
Menace</Name>

Output

$ sed -f script.sed data
<Name> XXXXX </Name>
<Name>XXX</Name>
<Name> XXXXX XXXXXX </Name>
<Name> XXXXXX </Name> <Name> XXXXXX </Name>
<Name> XXXXXX XXXX </Name> <Name> XXXXXX XXX XXXXXX </Name>
<Name>XXXXXX XXXX</Name> <Name>XXXXXX XXX XXXXXX</Name>
<Name> Jason
</Name>
<Name>
Jim</Name>
<Name> Jason
Bourne </Name>
<Name> XXXXXX </Name> <Name> Dennis
</Name>
<Name> Elijah
Wood </Name> <Name> Dennis
The Menace </Name>
<Name>Elijah
Wood</Name> <Name>Dennis The
Menace</Name>
$

Note the replacement part way through the end. That line is going to cause headaches for anything more.

I've not worked out how the script would handle the various split-line cases, beyond it would almost certainly need to join lines until the </Name> is caught. It would then do processing closely related to that already shown, but it would need to allow for newlines in the matched material.

Answer 2

Try this python script:

$ cat script.py
#!/usr/bin/python
import re
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(open('allcases'), features="xml")
for tag in soup.findAll('Name'):
    for name in 'Jason Ignacio', 'Jason', 'Jim':
        tag.string =  re.sub(r'\b%s\b' % name, len(name)*'X', tag.string)
print(str(soup))

This code is compatible with either python2 or python3.

To make it work, you may need to install the BeautifulSoup module. On a debian-like system:

apt-get install python-bs4

Or, for python3:

apt-get install python3-bs4

Example

Let's consider this input file:

$ cat cases
<page>
<p>Jason</p>
<Name> Jason </Name>
<p>Jason</p>
 <Name>Jim</Name>
<p>Jim</p>
<Name>Jim
</Name>
<Name>
     Jim
       </Name>
<Name> Jason </Name> <Name> Ignacio </Name>
<Name> Jason Ignacio </Name>
</page>

Let's run our script and observe the output:

$ python script.py
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<page>
<p>Jason</p>
<Name> XXXXX </Name>
<p>Jason</p>
<Name>XXX</Name>
<p>Jim</p>
<Name>XXX
</Name>
<Name>
     XXX
       </Name>
<Name> XXXXX </Name> <Name> Ignacio </Name>
<Name> XXXXXXXXXXXXX </Name>
</page>

Note that the names in <p> tags are left alone. The code only changes the names in <Name> tags.

Also, as per the design, Jim, Jason, and Jason Ignacio are changed to X's but other names are left alone. Even Ignacio, if it appears without an adjacent Jason, is left alone.