Using sed (or anything useful) to replace strings with relative content

Question

Usually to replace strings across multiple files, one simply needs to use

sed -i 's/string1/string2/g' *

However, how could I use the sed command (or anything that works, really) to replace things strings with content relative to them. For example:

<td><a href="">a</a></td>
<td><a href="">abbr</a></td>
<td><a href="">address</a></td>
<td><a href="">area</a></td>
...

Using the example above, what could I use to replace the text such that the result is thus:

<td><a href="HTML-EX/html/a.html">a</a></td>
<td><a href="HTML-EX/html/abbr.html">abbr</a></td>
<td><a href="HTML-EX/html/address.html">address</a></td>
<td><a href="HTML-EX/html/area.html">area</a></td>
...

where it is replacing the double quotes "" with the string a few characters relative to it.

daisy · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-20 03:14:56Z

4

The following example should work for you.

sed 's#<a href="">\(.*\)</a>#<a href="HTML-EX/html/\1.html">\1</a>#'

It first captures the text between the a tags, which is represented by the \1 variable. Then use the variable in the result string.

answered Mar 20, 2017 at 3:14

daisy

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user218374 · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-20 12:38:57Z

0

perl -i -pe 's|<a\hhref=\K "" (?=>([^<]+)</a>)|"HTML-EX/html/$1.html"|gx' *

Use the lookbehind and lookahed at "" and insert the requisite string inside these double quotes based on the lookahead capture.

answered Mar 20, 2017 at 12:38

user218374

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