XML-Wrapper Overview

XML-Wrapper is a command line utility that takes the text output from other programs and - based on a customised XML configuration file - converts it into an appropriate XML structure. Regular expressions form the basis of the tool's power in breaking down complex output into meaningful, hierarchical structures.

Background

There is a massive number of command line tools available, particularly in Unix/Linux, that display information on-screen. These range from built-in commands such as ls or ping to complex tools that display application-specific information, including server statistics, command line database reporting, etc.

The problem is, they all just output plain text, and no two tools output it the same way...

Wouldn't it be nice if it was possible to take the text output from one of these tools and convert it into a standard format such as XML? This way the data could be read by any application that handles XML, displayed as part of web pages using CSS, or even loaded into a database? This was the motivation behind XML-Wrapper.

The theory behind XML-Wrapper

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