UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello sir,

I have generated XML file from VS 2005. It works well in windows but it shows some junk characters in unix.
Can any help me with this problem.

Thank you in advance.
Hema

Could you please tells us more or show a sample ?

Code:

dos2unix yourfile yourfile

Here is the snippet from my xml file. This is the content showed in the xml file when I open it in Windows.

<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>3VL9300-3HQ00</DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>1SE0106-4YA80</DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>84/.3 BC 6.0 X 4C CABLE</DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>

Whereas if I open this same file in UNIX, I could see some junk characters like:

<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS><![3VL9300-3HQ00 ></DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS><!1SE0131-2YA80]></DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS><84/.3 BC 6.0 X 4C CABLE></DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>

There are lots of <DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS> tags in the file. Only in very few lines I could see these kind of junk characters and hence are not getting parsed properly. And also, I have lots of similar .xml files. Only 2 files have this issue. I have generated all the xml files using the same VS 2005 application.

Please help us to identify the issue.

Thanks

Code:

sed 's/>[<!\[]*/>/;s/ *]*></</' input >ouput

Code:

$ cat input
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS><![3VL9300-3HQ00 ></DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS><!1SE0131-2YA80]></DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS><84/.3 BC 6.0 X 4C CABLE></DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
$ sed 's/>[<!\[]*/>/;s/ *]*></</' input
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>3VL9300-3HQ00</DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>1SE0131-2YA80</DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
<DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>84/.3 BC 6.0 X 4C CABLE</DESCRIPTION-OF-GOODS>
$

Thanks for your response again.

Though I did not understand your reply completely, I think you have send us the commands that I can use to eliminate those special characters in the XML file.

Means, I need to identified the infected files and run these commands on those files and then use it for further processing. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

But, I'm really interested in knowing the root cause for this problem. Could you please explain us, why this issue is occurring? Is there anything that I need to take care while generating these xml files? I'm confused because this issue is not common across all the files.. Only 2 out of hundreds of files (that I have created in the past) have this issue...

Thanks

I have no idea how your files are generated.
So i don't know what is the root cause for this erroneous character to append.

Yes, the command i did post are to correct the file to make them look as you need it to.
BUT beware using it : this assumes that the rest of the file is structured the same way than the 3 lines you gave in your sample (having such kind of entries).

I have yet to encounter a single Microsoft product capable of generating terse, well-formatted HTML or XML...