hxselect − extract elements or attributes that match a (CSS) selector
hxselect [ −i ] [ −c ] [ −l language ] [ −s separator ] selectors
hxselect reads a well-formed XML document and outputs all elements and attributes that match one of the CSS selectors that are given as an argument. For example
hxselect ol li:first-child
selects the first li (list item in XHTML) in an ol (ordered list).
If there are multiple selectors, they must be separated by commas. For example,
hxselect p + ul, blockquote ol
selects all ul elements that follow a p and all ol elements that are descendants of a blockquote element.
The command operates on the standard input.
hxselect assumes that class selectors (".foo") refer to an attribute called "class" and that ID selectors ("#foo") refer to an attribute called "id".
The experimental attribute node selector ’::attr(name)’ is supported and selects the attribute of that name.
Comments and processing instructions are ignored, i.e., they are read but never written.
The following options are supported:
|
−i |
Match case-insensitively. Useful for HTML and some other SGML-based languages. | ||
|
−c |
Print content only. Without −c, the start and end tag of the matched element are printed as well; with −c only the contents of the matched element are printed. If an attribute rather than an element is selected (::attr() selector), only the value of the attribute is printed. |
−l language
Sets the default language, in case the root element doesn’t have an xml:lang attribute (default: none). Example: −l en
−s separator
A string to print after each match (default: empty). Accepts C-like escapes. Example: −s '\n\n' to print an empty line after each match.
The following
operand is supported:
selectors
One or more comma-separated selectors. Most selectors from CSS level 3 are supported, with the exception of selectors that require interaction (e.g., ’:active’) or layout (e.g., ’:first-line).
Case-insensitive selectors (option −i) currently only works for ASCII characters ("a" matches "A"), not for other characters ("ä" does not match "Ã").
asc2xml(1), xml2asc(1), hxnormalize(1), hxremove(1), UTF-8 (RFC 2279)