Question

I have a text file containing strings to encrypt. These strings are indicated by tags.

Example:

This is an <tag> example </tag>.

What is the best way in UNIX (using the common tools like sed, bash, etc. ) to search all occurrences and at the same time replace it with the encrypted value (this is a function of the string inside the tags)?

Result:

This is an <tag> <encrypted value here> </tag>.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Ok, I was able to find a solution a few days ago.
I used bash and regular expressions.

Here is how I did it:

#!/bin/bash

REGEX='^(.*<tag>)(.*)(<\tag>.*)$'

function process()
{
   RESULT= #do processing of $1 here
}

while read line ; do
   while [[ $line =~ "$REGEX" ]] ; do
      process "${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"
      line="${BASH_REMATCH[1]}$RESULT${BASH_REMATCH[3]}"
   done
   echo "$line" > "$OUTPUT_FILE"
done < "$FILE"