I have an XML tag like this:
<property name="agent" value="/var/tmp/root/eclipse" />

Is there way using awk that i can get the value from the above tag. So the output should be:
/var/tmp/root/eclipse

Help will be appreciated.

Regards,
Adi

If you're using a gnu-like awk that supports a record separator pattern, this might work for you:

awk '
    /property name=/ {
        gsub( ".*value=\"", "" );
        gsub( "\".*", "" );
        print;
    }
' RS="[<>]"  input-file

Hi Agama,

Thanks for the reply, but that does not work. The script that you provided just removes the <> from the line and displays
property name="agent" value="/var/tmp/root/eclipse" /
as output.

-Adi

If that xml tag does not have a different attribute, you can simply do:-

awk -F\" '/property name=/ { print $(NF-1); } ' xml_file

How were you testing it? if you were using echo to echo it and pipe it into awk, were you using double quotes round the whole string? That won't work. Use single quotes:

echo '<property name="agent" value="/var/tmp/root/eclipse" />' | awk '
    /property name=/ {
        gsub( ".*value=\"", "" );
        gsub( "\".*", "" );
        print;
    }
' RS="[<>]"

/var/tmp/root/eclipse

Hi Agama,

You solution works but i just confirmed the XML tag is:
<property name='agent' value='/var/tmp/root/eclipse' />

instead of a ", its ' to represent String attribute.
How would i modify your script now?

-Adi

Ah, very good, thanks.

Have a go with this:

 awk '
    /property name=/ {
        gsub( ".*value=" Q, "" );
        gsub( Q ".*", "" );
        print;
    }
' Q="'" RS="[<>]"