Re: sed to translate

To avoid the sometimes bizarre world of advanced regular expressions, I think I'd do it a little differently. I'd use two passes: the first would convert all ampersands to &, then the second would convert & (the result of the first conversion on a properly formatted &) back to &.

Joe

Hi,

I trying to code a sed statement that I can run from RPG to translate
special entities that are killing my %XML_INTO operation.

Notably, the xml document is being delivered containing embedded &
characters.


Now sed is a very powerful tool that can do this easily, once you get
your propeller hat on.

I'm almost there, but no cigar.

For example, if my xml file named test1.xml contains the following -


<company>smith & brown not smith &amp; jones but F&P </company>


Note: the 2nd ampersand between smith and jones has already been
converted to the entity &amp; so we want to ignore this.

Just convert the ampersands between smith and brown plus others like the
one in F&P.


So far, when I run this from QShell

sed 's/\&[^amp]/\&amp;/g' test1.xml


I get

<person>smith &amp;brown not smith &amp; jones but F&amp; </person>


Note: when I get it right I'll redirect the result to a file instead of
stdout


It's replacing the ampersand OK but also the character after it, while
correctly ignoring the existing &amp;

So the space before brown has gone, likewise the P in F&P.


How to make this baby behave.


Cheers, Peter