xgrep(1)

💖 xgrep(1) — General Commands Manual, but make it a vibe 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because today we're talking about xgrep — a whole General Commands Manual entry that's about to become your new hyperfixation. she searches the content of XML files and she does it flawlessly. no cap. 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

xgrep — search content of an XML file 🔍

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

xgrep [-h] [-v] [-t] [-p] [-n nsdef [-n nsdef]...] [-x xpath] [-s string
[-s string]...] [-c catalog-file] [infile [infile]...]

like, look at her. so many little flags. she's that girl. 💅

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so xgrep is literally built to search content inside XML files. iconic behavior.

you tell her what to look for in one of two ways:

• an XPath spec, via the -x flag 🧭
• or a custom syntax that includes extended regular expressions, via the -s flag 🧵

you can also throw multiple input files at her — and if you don't give her any at all? she just reads from stdin, like the low-maintenance queen she is. 🫶

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💜 OPTIONS 💜

xgrep accepts the following options, and yes, we're going through every single one because they all matter:

• -x xpath — an XPath specification of the elements of interest. that's it, that's the flag. 🎯
• -s string — a custom string format specifying the elements of interest. the format is base-element:element/regex/,element/regex/,... where base-element is the name of the elements within which a match should be attempted, and the match succeeds if, for each element/regex/ pair, the content of an element of that name is matched by the corresponding regex. and bestie, if you pass multiple -s flags, a match by any one of them gets returned. obsessed. 🔥
• -n nsdef — define a namespace prefix using the form prefix=namespace. 🏷️
• -c catalog-file — use the specified catalog file instead of the default. 📚
• -p — regular expressions use Perl syntax as implemented in the PCRE library. (heads up: this option is only available when xgrep has been linked with the PCRE library.) 🐚
• -t — text output mode, for generating output formatted for subsequent processing by standard command-line text tools (grep, sed, etc.). linefeeds are converted to spaces within each matching node set, and each node set is separated by a newline. very "plays well with others" of her. ✨
• -h — display usage information. 🙋
• -v — display version information. 🏆

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

okay so picture an XML format for personnel information, where each person element has descendant elements called name and hiredate. 💼

to find all person elements with "Smith" in the content of the name element and "2000" in the content of the hiredate element, you do:

xgrep -s 'person:name/Smith/,hiredate/2000/' a.xml b.xml

see? she ate. 💅

now, using XPath to locate elements with a namespace requires use of the -n flag to define a namespace prefix for use in the XPath. so for example, to search for "name" elements within a GPX document, you do:

xgrep -n gpx="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1" \
      -x '//gpx:name' data.gpx

namespace? handled. 💖

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

regex(7), pcre(3), xmllint(1) — go read those too, bestie, they're part of the friend group. 🫶

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Brendt Wohlberg <software@wohlberg.net> — the mastermind, the moment, the main character. 🌟

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and that's the whole page, no skips, no summarising, every flag accounted for. periodt. 💀

so yeah — that's xgrep(1), straight outta the General Commands Manual, dated 9 August 2013. thank you for coming to my ted talk, ily, go grep something. 🎀💜✨