Question

The question is a sequel to plain text URL to HTML code (Automator/AppleScript).

Suppose I have a plain txt file /Users/myname/Desktop/URLlist.txt:

title 1
http://a.b/c

title 2
http://d.e/f

...

I’d like to (1) convert all the URL (http://...) to HTML code, and (2) add

&nbsp;<br />

to each empty line, so that the aforementioned content will become:

title 1
<a href="http://a.b/c">http://a.b/c</a>
&nbsp;<br />
title 2
<a href="http://d.e/f">http://d.e/f</a>
&nbsp;<br />
...

I come to the following Applescript:

set inFile to "/Users/myname/Desktop/URLlist.txt"
set middleFile to "/Users/myname/Desktop/URLlist2.txt"
set outFile to "/Users/myname/Desktop/URLlist3.txt"

do shell script "sed 's/\\(http[^ ]*\\)/<a href=\"\\1\">\\1<\\/a>/g' " & quoted form of inFile & " >" & quoted form of middleFile
do shell script "sed 's/^$/\\&nbsp;<br \\/>/g' " & quoted form of middleFile & " >" & quoted form of outFile

It works, but it is redundant (and silly?). Could anyone make it more succinct? Can it be done involving only one text file instead of three (i.e. the original content in /Users/myname/Desktop/URLlist.txt is overwritten with the end result)?

Thank you very much in advance.

Answer 1

Try:

set inFile to "/Users/myname/Desktop/URLlist.txt"

set myData to (do shell script "sed '
/\\(http[^ ]*\\)/ a\\
&nbsp;<br />
' " & quoted form of inFile & " | sed 's/\\(http[^ ]*\\)/<a href=\"\\1\">\\1<\\/a>/g' ")

do shell script "echo " & quoted form of myData & " > " & quoted form of inFile

This will let you use the myData variable later in your script. If this is not part of a larger script and you are simply modifying your file, use the -i option as jackjr300 suggests. Also, this script looks for the original pattern and appends the new line to it rather than simply looking for empty lines.

EDIT:

set inFile to "/Users/myname/Desktop/URLlist.txt"
set myData to (do shell script "sed 's/\\(http[^ ]*\\)/<a href=\"\\1\">\\1<\\/a>/g; s/^$/\\&nbsp;<br \\/>/g' " & quoted form of inFile)
do shell script "echo " & quoted form of myData & " > " & quoted form of inFile