Question

I have a .plist file that looks like this:

<plist version="1.0">
<array>
<dict>
    <key>name</key>
    <string>Alabama</string>
    <key>abreviation</key>
    <string>AL</string>
    <key>date</key>
    <string>1819</string>
    <key>population</key>
    <string>4,627,851</string>
    <key>capital</key>
    <string>Montgomery</string>
    <key>largestCity</key>
    <string>Birmingham</string>
</dict>
....
</array>
</plist>

I want to add more information to the plist such as motto and nickname. They are in this format:

<nickname>Yellowhammer State</nickname>
<nickname>The Last Frontier</nickname>
<nickname>The Grand Canyon State</nickname>
<nickname>The Natural State</nickname>
<nickname>The Golden State</nickname>
<nickname>The Centennial State</nickname>
<nickname>The Constitution State</nickname>
<nickname>The First State</nickname>
<nickname>The Sunshine State</nickname>

I am considering doing some search and replace to add more information. I could also write a perl script to read the nicknames and add them into the plist.

But, is there a text processing program that would allow me to iterate over the values and insert them in the correct spot? I have been searching through text processors/editors and cannot find what I am looking for.

Answer 1

That looks like a job for XSLT: xsltproc on the Mac or Linux.
( or SAXON, which supports XSLT 2.0 )

[ You don’t mention how the nicknames in the 2nd file match up
to values in the first file: are they in matching sequence ? ]