using tr strip away html tags

Micky12345 · 03-16-2012, 11:55 AM

i have a html file

<html>
<title>Hello</title>
</html>

In this html file i want to remove the tags from the file.

So i did

Code:

 cat filename | tr -d '</>

but it deletes only <,>, and /

but not words inside

for eg:
from the tag <html>

html will remain as it is only <,> get removed.

so i tried

Code:

cat filename | tr '<[a-b]> '[a-b]'

but its not giving methe expected answer

can anyone help me in solving this?
thanks in advance

danielbmartin · 03-16-2012, 12:12 PM

Try this...

Code:

echo "<html>
<title>Hello</title>
</html>"  \
|sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g'

Daniel B. Martin

Andrew Benton · 03-16-2012, 12:23 PM

Code:

cat foo.html | w3m -dump -T text/html > foo.txt

theNbomr · 03-16-2012, 03:33 PM

The solution offered by Andrew Benton is a specific instance of the more general solution that includes a proper HTML parser. Trying to manipulate HTML with basic commandline text tools is an exercise in futility. It takes a fair bit of code to create a robust parser of XML/HTML, unless you can make a lot of significant assumptions (and we all know where that leads...).
Another solution that can be robust and complete would be to use a ready-made Perl package such as HTML::Parser. Other languages such as Python, Ruby, etc., probably have equivalent packages.

--- rod.

Micky12345 · 03-17-2012, 09:14 AM

Code:

sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g' filename

worked for me

But , I want it using tr command is it possible?? with tr

Thnks danielbmartin for your reply

theNbomr · 03-17-2012, 01:03 PM

tr operates on individual characters and classes of characters, not patterns. If you use tr to delete characters, it cannot distinguish those that are part of the tag from those that are part of the literal data. There is a reason that regular expressions are part of many text manipulation tools.
--- rod.