Question

Let’s say I have xml structure like this

<root>
    <element>some content</element>
    <element>some content 2</element>
    <element>some content 3</element>
    <element>some content 4</element>
    <element>some content 5</element>
    <element>some content 6</element>
    <element>some content 7</element>
    <element>some content 8</element>
    <element>some content 9</element>
    <element>some content 10</element>
</root>

I have plenty of tags in the root, let’s say 1000, and each of them contains different data of course (not unique), my problem is … what is the fastest way how to find out the number of the element, for instance if I work with element “some content 8” I want to get number 8, I know that xpath is probably the right tool for that but it seems to me very slow (I want to do that like in few seconds, because I use it very often)

Maybe some “vim” way how to do this?

Thank you

Answer 1

You could count all the times a substitute of <element> would occur from the first up to the current line:

:0,.s/<element>//gn

Note that the n flag prevents the substitute from actually occuring.

This will obviously not work for all conceivable types of XML but might fit your data.