Regex to match a tag, skip a few, then match again

Question

I have xml files formatted like this:

<User>
<FirstName>Foo Bar</FirstName>
<LastName>Blah</LastName>
<OtherStuff>...</OtherStuff>
<More>...</More>
<CompanyName>Foo</CompanyName>
<EmailAddress>[email protected]</EmailAddress>
</User>
<User>
...

I want to read through all xml files, creating as output <FirstName>,<CompanyName>,<EmailAddress>, so:

Foo Bar,Foo,[email protected]
Name,User2,[email protected]
FSds,Blah,[email protected]

I am using the following regex

(?si)<FirstName>(.*?)</FirstName>.*?<CompanyName>(.*?)</CompanyName>\s*<EmailAddress>(.*?)</EmailAddress>'

However, this returns also everything from the tags between FirstName and CompanyName

What am I doing wrong?

I just need this quick and dirty approach to work because of a deadline :P Client is King and all that :-) — Pr0no, Oct 28 '14 at 16:58
[No, you don't](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1630171). — Ansgar Wiechers, Oct 28 '14 at 20:47

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 28 '14 at 16:58

Why not use XML processing?

C:\PS> $xml = [xml]@'
>>> <Users>
>>> <User>
>>> <FirstName>Foo Bar</FirstName>
>>> <LastName>Blah</LastName>
>>> <OtherStuff>...</OtherStuff>
>>> <More>...</More>
>>> <CompanyName>Foo</CompanyName>
>>> <EmailAddress>[email protected]</EmailAddress>
>>> </User>
>>> </Users>
>>> '@
C:\PS> "$($xml.Users.User.FirstName), $($xml.Users.User.CompanyName), $($xml.Users.User.EmailAddress)"
Foo Bar, Foo, [email protected]

You haven't shown the full XML document so I'm guessing on the top level nodes. You will need to adjust based on the structure of your XML doc.

This is the quick and _easy_ approach for sure. – Matt Oct 28 '14 at 17:27 — Matt, Oct 28 '14 at 17:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 28 '14 at 17:30

I find multi-line regex can be easier if you build it in a here-string:

$String = @'
<User>
<FirstName>Foo Bar</FirstName>
<LastName>Blah</LastName>
<OtherStuff>...</OtherStuff>
<More>...</More>
<CompanyName>Foo</CompanyName>
<EmailAddress>[email protected]</EmailAddress>
</User>
'@

$regex = @'
(?ms).+?<FirstName>(.+?)</FirstName>.*?
<CompanyName>(.+?)</CompanyName>.*?
<EmailAddress>(.+?)</EmailAddress>.+?
'@

$string -match $regex > $null
$matches[1..3] -join ','



Foo Bar,Foo,[email protected]

If it's a big file and you don't want to read it all in at once, you can use the closing tag as a delimiter:

Get-Content xmlfile.xml -Delimiter '</User>' |
 foreach {
  if ($_ -match $regex)
   {$matches[1..3] -join ','
   }

Regex to match a tag, skip a few, then match again

2 Answers2