So i wanted to replace the following
<duration>89</duration>
with (Expected Result or at least Shoud become this:)
\n<duration>89</duration>
so basically replace every < with \n< in regex So i figured.
sed -e 's/<[^/]/\n</g'
Only problem it obviously outputs
\n<uration>89</duration>
Which brings me to my question. How can i tell regex to mach for a character which follows < (is not /) but stop it from replacing it so i can get my expected result?
It can be nicely done with awk:
echo '<duration>89</duration>' | awk '1' RS='<' ORS='\n<'
RS='<' sets the input record separator to<`ORS='\n<' sets the output record separator to\n<'1 always evaluates to true. An true condition without an subsequent action specified tells awk to print the record.
echo "<duration>89</duration>" | sed -E 's/<([^\/])/\\n<\1/g'
should do it.
Sample Run
$ echo "<duration>89</duration>
> <tag>Some Stuff</tag>"| sed -E 's/<([^\/])/\\n<\1/g'
\n<duration>89</duration>
\n<tag>Some Stuff</tag>
Your statement is kind of correct with one small problem. sed replaces entire pattern, even any condition you have put. So, [^/] conditional statement also gets replaced. What you need is to preserve this part, hence you can try any of the following two statements:
sed -e 's/<\([^/]\)/\n<\1/g' file
or as pointed by Cyrus
sed -e 's/<[^/]/\n&/g' file
Cheers!
echo '<duration>89</duration>' | awk '{sub(/<dur/,"\\n<dur")}1'
\n<duration>89</duration>
