With the three lines of sample input shown above in file1, both the sed command and the awk command shown above will only write:

Code:

1234567890

into files file5 and file7, respectively, not:

Code:

1234
1234567890
11

Neither script explicitly checks that <number>string</number> appears after <phone>, but they both only look for number tags on lines that contain the string phone.

Please reread the last two paragraphs I wrote in post #4 in this thread. They clearly state the limitations of the scripts presented above (and the other suggested scripts in that post).

If these results don't match what you get on your system with the above data, please show us the exact output you are getting and tell us what operating system and shell you are using.

If the code does work for this example, but fails for some other data, show us an example of the exact input lines that are producing the wrong output and shows the exact output produced, AND clearly describe the exact arrangement of tags on lines in the files you are trying to process. Everything you have shown us says that lines that you want to process have <phone> as the first tag on a line, the string you want to retrieve between <number> and </number> tags, and the last tag on the line is </phone>. And, all of the suggestions that have been provided assume this is an accurate description of the lines that need to be processed.