plain text URL to HTML code (Automator/AppleScript)

Question

Suppose I have a plain txt file in a text editor such as TextEdit:

title 1
http://a.b/c

title 2
http://d.e/f

...

I'd like to convert all the lines beginning with http:// to HTML code for URL, so that the aforementioned content will become:

title 1
<a href="http://a.b/c">http://a.b/c</a>

title 2
<a href="http://d.e/f">http://d.e/f</a>

...

How can I get this done in Automator or AppleScript? (My current solution is using Gmail, but it involves multi-step copy-paste.)

Thank you very much in advance.

adayzdone · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-02 17:25:42Z

1

This will let you avoid another editor:

set inFile to "/Users/you/Desktop/Urls.txt"
set outFile to "/Users/you/Desktop/Urls2.txt"

do shell script "sed 's/\\(http[^ ]*\\)/<a href=\"\\1\">\\1<\\/a>/g' " & quoted form of inFile & " >" & quoted form of outFile

answered Dec 2, 2012 at 17:25

adayzdone

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Lri · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-02 16:00:44Z

0

Just do a regex search and replace in a text editor or Terminal:

sed -E 's|^(http:.*)|<a href="\1">\1</a>|g' file.txt

answered Dec 2, 2012 at 16:00

Lri

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1 Comment

user1870433 Over a year ago

Thank you very much for the quick and helpful response! Since the Terminal method only replaced the first URL, I looked for a Mac application that supported regex expression. I got MacVim. There is a "Convert to HTML" menu command in the "Syntax" menu of MacVim that accomplishes the replacement I wanted perfectly. Thank you.

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