STAG-GREP(1)

💖 STAG-GREP 💖

okay bestie, welcome to stag-grep — she lives in the User Contributed Perl Documentation section of your manual, and she's here to filter a stag file (xml, itext, sxpr) so you only get the nodes you actually care about. no cap. 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

stag-grep — filters a stag file (xml, itext, sxpr) for nodes of interest 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

stag-grep person -q name=fred file1.xml

stag-grep person 'sub {shift->get_name =~ /^A*/}' file1.xml

stag-grep -p My::Foo -w sxpr record 'sub{..}' file2

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✨ USAGE ✨

stag-grep [-p|parser PARSER] [-w|writer WRITER] NODE -q tag=val FILE

stag-grep [-p|parser PARSER] [-w|writer WRITER] NODE SUB FILE

stag-grep [-p|parser PARSER] [-w|writer WRITER]  NODE -f PERLFILE FILE

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so the way this works: she parses an input file using whatever parser you told her to use — could be one of the built-in stag parsers, like xml — and then she filters the resulting stag tree based on a subroutine you supply. she writes out only the nodes/elements that pass the test. it's giving very selective. very curated. 🌸

and here's the iconic part: the parser is event based, so she should be able to handle large files, no problem 😌 (lowkey tho — if the node you're parsing is large, it will take up more memory, so keep that in mind bestie 🫶)

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✨ ARGUMENTS ✨

• -p|parser FORMAT — FORMAT is one of xml, sxpr or itext, or the name of a perl module. and guess what, xml is assumed as default 💫
• -w|writer FORMAT — FORMAT is one of xml, sxpr or itext, or the name of a perl module.
• -c|count — prints the number of nodes that pass the test 🔢 slay.
• -filterfile|f — a file containing a perl subroutine (this goes in place of the SUB argument, iykyk)
• -q|query TAG1=VAL1 -q|query TAG2=VAL2 ... -q|query TAGN=VALN — filters based on the field TAG 🔍
  • other operators can be used too — eg <, <=, etc
  • multiple q arguments can be passed in, stack 'em up
  • for more complex operations, pass in your own subroutine, see below 👇
• SUB — a perl subroutine. this subroutine is evaluated every time NODE is encountered — the stag object for NODE is passed into the subroutine.
  • if the subroutine passes, the node will be passed to the writer for display ✨
• NODE — the name of the node/element we are filtering on 👑
• FILE — the file to be parsed. If no parser option is supplied, this is assumed to be a stag compatible syntax (xml, sxpr or itext); otherwise you should parse in a parser name or a parser module that throws stag events 🎀

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

• Data::Stag

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and that's the whole vibe, bestie 💜 go forth and filter, main character energy only 👑

perl v5.42.0 · 2025-07-25 — mwah, catch u in the next manpage 🎀🦋💖