sed: replace same number of characters between tags
 

I am having trouble getting the command right for replacing a series of characters between two tags with spaces with the aid of sed. The idea is the following:

Replace
with

that is replace each asterisk * between TAG ONE delimiters with one x (actually a space, but that is not visible in the QUOTE environment here at LQ.com), and leave the other * alone.

I have an HTML ASCII art file, which I would like to "convert" with sed to a simple text file that I could use in other areas without the tags. I'd have to remove all tags and add the appropriate new lines, but with sed that is a piece of cake. The only problem that remains is the "between-tags" thingy.

Thanks!

How about posting what you have tried?

One way to approach this is with addressing. Example:

sed '/TAG ONE/s/\**/ /g'
Translation: For all lines containing the string "TAG ONE", replace a string containing any number of "*"s with a single space. Do this for all occurrences on the same line. Take out the extra "*" to replace each "*" with a space.

Best SED tutorial here: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html

I think perl is better for this multi-line stuff but I may be ignorant, I never use sed anyway:

Output:
If that's what you want and you're unfamiliar with perl, I can modify this to accept a file as input. I'm here all afternoon. Mostly.

There's almost certainly a similar way to do it with some shell code (using sed) tho. But you won't get it from me ;)

Sudden after thought -- if you don't want to use a script this will work from the command line:

OK, thanks. Sometimes there are several different tag environments on one line and then it changes all * into spaces instead of the ones between <TAG ONE> and </TAG ONE> only.

Using GNU sed

Thanks, I would have never come up with the last one! Many thanks.