I'm trying to extract data/urls (in this case - someurl) from a file that contains them within some tag ie.
xyz>someurl>xyz
I don't mind using either awk or sed.
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Likely same as: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13386080/extract-text-between-two-strings-repeatedly-awk-sed, although the example there is ugly. – Ciro Santilli Путлер Капут 六四事 Jul 07 '15 at 08:41
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Possible duplicate of [How to use sed/grep to extract text between two words?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13242469/how-to-use-sed-grep-to-extract-text-between-two-words) – tripleee Aug 22 '18 at 09:48
3 Answers
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I think the best, easiest, way is with cut:
$ echo "xyz>someurl>xyz" | cut -d'>' -f2
someurl
With awk can be done like:
$ echo "xyz>someurl>xyz" | awk 'BEGIN { FS = ">" } ; { print $2 }'
someurl
And with sed is a little bit more tricky:
$ echo "xyz>someurl>xyz" | sed 's/\(.*\)>\(.*\)>\(.*\)/\2/g'
someurl
we get blocks of something1<something2<something3 and print the 2nd one.
fedorqui
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grep was born to extract things:
kent$ echo "xyz>someurl>xyz"|grep -Po '>\K[^>]*(?=>)'
someurl
you could kill a fly with a bomb of course:
kent$ echo "xyz>someurl>xyz"|awk -F\> '$0=$2'
someurl
Kent
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Hi Kent, if you don't mind, could you explain '>\K[^>]*(?=>)' I'm assuming [^>] means the start and (?=>) as the end; what are the rest? thanks – L P May 29 '13 at 16:05
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`[^>]` means any char instead of `>` and `(?=>)` is look-ahead. matches char followed by `>` – Kent May 29 '13 at 16:07
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awk is not a bomb, this is exactly what it is intended for. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jun 03 '13 at 16:55
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If your grep supports P option then you can use lookahead and lookbehind regular expression to identify the url.
$ echo "xyz>someurl>xyz" | grep -oP '(?<=xyz>).*(?=>xyz)'
someurl
This is just a sample to get you started not the final answer.
jaypal singh
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