[SOLVED] Using GNU grep in a Windows batch script?

[Shohreh]

Hello,

The following works with when using GNU grep on Linux…

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joe# grep -shoP '<div class="legend"><a href="/en/map/.+?</a>' input.txt

… but doesn't when used in a Windows batck file:

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C:\>grep -shoP '<div class="legend"><a href="/en/map/.+?</a>' input.txt
< was unexpected at this time.

C:\>grep -shoP ^"<div class=\"legend\"><a href=\"/en/map/.+?</a>" input.txt
< was unexpected at this time.

C:\>grep -shoP "<div class=\"legend\"><a href=\"/en/map/.+?</a>" input.txt
The system cannot find the file specified.

C:\>grep -shoP "<div class=\"legend\"><a href=\"/en/map/.+?</a>" . input.txt
The system cannot find the file specified.

Any idea what must be done to get Windows and/or grep to work?

Thank you.

[dbenham]

Your problem is grep and cmd.exe have different quoting and escape rules. You need to account for both, remembering that cmd.exe quoting/escaping is processed before grep.

cmd.exe does not have a mechanism to escape a double quote within a double quoted string. Once quoting has begun, the next quote always turns quoting off. This is important because you have lots of < and > characters that must either be escaped as ^< and ^>, or else quoted.

I believe the following works

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grep -shoP "<div class=\"legend\"><a href=\"/en/map/.+?^</a^>^" input.txt

Using color coding, the blue text is quoted from a cmd.exe perspective, and the red is unquoted:

grep -shoP "<div class=\"legend\"><a href=\"/en/map/.+?^</a^>^" input.txt

The easiest solution is probably to represent the quote literals using \x22. Then you can simply enclose the entire regex in quotes and not worry about any cmd.exe escapes.

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grep -shoP "<div class=\x22legend\x22><a href=\x22/en/map/.+?</a>" input.txt

Dave Benham

[Shohreh]

Perfect! Thank you very much.

[Shohreh]

I have another issue with cmd.exe.

I used ssed.exe ("Super sed") because the original is always greedy.

I'm trying to remove all the lines except those that start with "#" (ie. keep the comments), but no matter what I try, I can't get it to work:

I tried doubling or even tripling each circumflex, and using its hex ASCII number, to no avail:

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ssed.exe -R "s@^[^#]+$@@g" input.txt > output.txt
ssed.exe -R "s@^^[^^#]+$@@g" input.txt > output.txt
ssed.exe -R "s@^^^[^^^#]+$@@g" input.txt > output.txt
ssed.exe -R "s@\x5e[\x5e#]+$@@g" input.txt > output.txt

Any idea?

Thank you.

[ShadowThief]

If you're already using grep, couldn't you just

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grep ^^# input.txt >output.txt

?

[siberia-man]

print the lines starting with #

as sed:

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sed -n "/^#/p" FILENAME

as grep:

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grep "^#" FILENAME

[Shohreh]

Brilliant!

I'll use ssed.exe so I wont have to provide two binaries for the same job.

[Shohreh]

For some reason, the following code works OK when calling it with either "*.gpx" or a specific filename with no spaces in (inputfile.gpx), but breaks if it holds spaces. The problem seems to come from %%f in the replacement passed to ssed:

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REM OK when called with my.bat "*.gpx" or my.bat inputfile.gpx
REM NOK when called with my.bat "my input file.gpx"
for %%f in ("%1") DO echo Handling %%f & ssed.exe -R "s@<name>.+?</name>@<name>%%f</name>@g" < "%%f" > "%%f.NAME"

Output:

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C:\>sed.name.replace.with.name.bat "my input file.gpx"
Handling "my input file.gpx"
ssed.exe: -e expression #1, char 32: unterminated `s' command

I've tried adding double-quotes around %%f, or replacing the double-quotes with single quotes, still no go.

Thank you.

[siberia-man]

Replace this one:

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for %%f in ("%1") DO ... <name>%%f</name>@g" < "%%f" > "%%f.NAME"

with:

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for %%f in ("%~1") DO ... <name>%%~f</name>@g" < "%%~f" > "%%~f.NAME"

[Shohreh]

Thanks for the tip!