Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a string that I need to remove data that is not within <>. For example:

Code:

this is a <test> of removing <text> outside brackets

output should be:

Code:

<test> <text>

or:

Code:

test text

I can use either of the two outputs but so far I have not had much luck removing all of the other text. The closest I have gotten is with he following awk command:

Code:

awk 'BEGIN{RS="<";FS="> "}{print $1}' filename

this outputs the following:

Code:

this is a
test
text

I can not get rid of the beggining of the line and the output is showing up on multiple lines which will not work as I am trying to assign the output to a single string variable.

I also tried the following awk:

Code:

awk -F'<|>' '{print $2}' filename

this outputs the following:

Code:

test

better but I am missing the second field.

When using sed I can remove all the text inside the <>

Code:

sed 's/<[^>]*>//g'

but not the reverse.

I think I am close but can not get it. Any help would be appreciated.

you only want the result in one line?
for this porpuse try this:

$more file
<test> <text>
$awk 'BEGIN{RS="<";FS=">"}{printf $1" " } END {printf "\n"} ' file
test text

There is probably an easier way then doing 2 sed commands, but this works:

Code:

echo "<test> <text>" | sed 's/<//g' | sed 's/>//g'

Output:

Code:

test text

chipcmc,

your update fixes my problem of having the output on a signle line but I still have the beggining of the line to deal with:

Code:

awk 'BEGIN{RS="<";FS=">"}{printf $1" " } END {printf "\n"} ' filename

output

Code:

this is a  test text

Padow,

You sed commands will only remove the <> from the string:

Code:

 cat filename | sed 's/<//g' | sed 's/>//g'

output

Code:

this is a test of removing text outside brackets

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vgersh99,

I updated my inital post to follow the correct format.

Thanks

What makes this difficult is having multiple occurrences of the bracketed fields per line. This rules out cut and makes awk very difficult to use. I'm sure some shell super-guru can accomplish this in a shell script, but it may be easier just to step this one up to perl or python.