parse text using grep regex pull out text from multiple lines of text in a file

Question

I have a chunck of text in a file:

<tr bgcolor="#F9F9F9">
     <td align="left">8/7/2012 11:23:42 AM</td>
     <td align="left"><em>Here is the text I want to parse out</em></td>
     <td class="ra">9.00</td>
     <td class="ra">297.00</td>
     <td class="ra">0.00</td>
     <td class="ra">0.00</td>
     <td class="ra">$0.00</td>
     <td class="ra">$0.50</td>
     <td class="ra"></td>
 </tr>

using grep I would like to end up with the result being

Here is the text I want to parse out

Working on the code now I have

cat file.txt | grep -m 1 -oP '<em>[^</em>]*'

but that does not work... thanks for your help!

cat file.txt | grep ... can be simplified to grep ... file.txt. — Asaph
– Asaph, Commented Aug 7, 2012 at 17:13
Do note that while what you want to do is possible (as demonstrated in answers below), regex is generally not the right tool to parse XML. For more robust solutions, use tools such as xmlstarlet or a language that gives you access to a proper XML parser. — Shawn Chin
– Shawn Chin, Commented Aug 7, 2012 at 17:20

Lev Levitsky · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-07 18:20:40Z

4

A correct regex would be (?<=).*?(?=).

So, try:

grep -m 1 -oP '(?<=<em>).*?(?=</em>)' file.txt

edited Aug 7, 2012 at 18:20

answered Aug 7, 2012 at 17:17

Lev Levitsky

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3 Comments

Greg Alexander Over a year ago

That gives me this Here is the text I want to parse out</td> <td class="ra">9.00</td> <td class="ra">297.00</td> <td class="ra">0.00</td> <td class="ra">0.00</td> <td class="ra">$0.00</td> <td class="ra">$0.50</td> <td class="ra"></td> </tr>

Greg Alexander Over a year ago

OK, so what it is doing is going to the last which is in another text block below it... should have mentioned that, so I need the end to be the first occurrence of ... make sense?

Lev Levitsky Over a year ago

@GregAlexander That could happen if the XML was all in one line, rather than nicely formatted as you show. Try to add a ? after * as I did in the edit.

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