AWK to skip comments in XML file - Shell Programming and Scripting

majormark · #1 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

Hello,

I'm trying to make a shell script to skip comments from an XML file, but with the code below only deletes comments that are in one line.

Can you tell me what can be added here?

Code:

nawk '

{
if($0 !~/<!--/) { a=0 } 

if($0 ~/<!--/ && $0 ~/-->/) {a=1} 

if($0 ~/<!--/) {a=1} 

if (a == 1) {next} 

if ($0 ~/-->/) {next} 

if (a == 0) {print $a} 
}

' ff

The file is:

Code:

this is a file
<!-- lalala  lalaa 1223
zzz
-->
begin here
important text here
<!-- 34543645 dsgs 1223
-->
important text here2

And the output is:

Code:

this is a file
zzz
begin here                                    
important text here
important text here2

As you can see the line "zzz" should not be printed.

Thanks