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Windows Bat Find and Replace Line Breaks in Specific Lines

I am not a pro developer and need a simple solution. I have tried using fart.exe within a Windows Bat file to accomplish this, but having trouble finding the exact lines I need to replace line breaks. In an XML file, here is what I am trying do.
I need to go from this (a few lines in the middle of a larger file):
<meta name="xyz:moreinfohere" content="some content"/>
<meta name="abc:evenmoreinfo" content="more content
and here is where
the problem lies"/>
<meta name="abc:infoagain" content="this is confusing"/>
<meta name="xyz:blahblah" content="please help"/>
to this:
<meta name="xyz:moreinfohere" content="some content"/>
<meta name="abc:evenmoreinfo" content="more content
and here is where
the problem lies"/>
<meta name="abc:infoagain" content="this is confusing"/>
<meta name="xyz:blahblah" content="please help"/>
The data filled in these fields will be variable, and this is a fictitious example. Basically, i am trying to replace the line breaks with the XA code, but only certain lines as you can see. I have managed to use fart.exe to replace all instances of \n\r but i can't figure out how to only do the needed ones. Not every line starts with "meta...". However every line in the files is supposed to end with ">" ...its the only constant/fixed character on every line in the files. Please help! I open to anything that works in a standard Windows Bat file (fart, java, etc.)

As you found out, a standard-compliant XML parser will replace a line feed in an attribute's value with a space unless the line feed is encoded using a character reference (e.g.
). (Reference)
So while I would normally recommend using a proper XML parser, that won't work here because we're trying to fix broken XML (i.e. XML that means something different than what we want it to mean).
We could write a proper XML parser that simply doesn't perform the line feed to space substitution and use that to fix the file, but that's a lot of work. The following is probably sufficient.
Assumptions:
All attributes values that need fixing use double-quotes (not single-quotes).
Double-quotes are always found in pairs in the documents to be fixed.
fix.pl:
use strict;
use warnings;
local $/;
while (<>) {
while (1) {
/\G ( [^"]+ ) /xgc
and print $1;
/\G \z /xgc
and last;
/\G ( " [^"]* " ) /xgc
and do {
print $1 =~ s/\n/
/rg;
next;
};
die("Unbalanced quotes");
}
}
Usage:
perl fix.pl file_to_fix.xml >fixed_file.xml
or
perl -i.bak fix.pl file_to_fix.xml
The latter modifies the file in-place after making a backup.
After you use this tool, use a file comparison tool (e.g. Beyond Compare) to make sure the fix was properly applied.

csv file giving showing wrong value [duplicate]

I'm developing a part of an application that's responsible for exporting some data into CSV files. The application always uses UTF-8 because of its multilingual nature at all levels. But opening such CSV files (containing e.g. diacritics, cyrillic letters, Greek letters) in Excel does not achieve the expected results showing something like Г„/Г¤, Г–/Г¶. And I don't know how to force Excel understand that the open CSV file is encoded in UTF-8. I also tried specifying UTF-8 BOM EF BB BF, but Excel ignores that.
Is there any workaround?
P.S. Which tools may potentially behave like Excel does?
UPDATE
I have to say that I've confused the community with the formulation of the question. When I was asking this question, I asked for a way of opening a UTF-8 CSV file in Excel without any problems for a user, in a fluent and transparent way. However, I used a wrong formulation asking for doing it automatically. That is very confusing and it clashes with VBA macro automation. There are two answers for this questions that I appreciate the most: the very first answer by Alex https://stackoverflow.com/a/6002338/166589, and I've accepted this answer; and the second one by Mark https://stackoverflow.com/a/6488070/166589 that have appeared a little later. From the usability point of view, Excel seemed to have lack of a good user-friendly UTF-8 CSV support, so I consider both answers are correct, and I have accepted Alex's answer first because it really stated that Excel was not able to do that transparently. That is what I confused with automatically here. Mark's answer promotes a more complicated way for more advanced users to achieve the expected result. Both answers are great, but Alex's one fits my not clearly specified question a little better.
UPDATE 2
Five months later after the last edit, I've noticed that Alex's answer has disappeared for some reason. I really hope it wasn't a technical issue and I hope there is no more discussion on which answer is greater now. So I'm accepting Mark's answer as the best one.

Alex is correct, but as you have to export to csv, you can give the users this advice when opening the csv files:
Save the exported file as a csv
Open Excel
Import the data using Data-->Import External Data --> Import Data
Select the file type of "csv" and browse to your file
In the import wizard change the File_Origin to "65001 UTF" (or choose correct language character identifier)
Change the Delimiter to comma
Select where to import to and Finish
This way the special characters should show correctly.

The UTF-8 Byte-order mark will clue Excel 2007+ in to the fact that you're using UTF-8. (See this SO post).
In case anybody is having the same issues I was, .NET's UTF8 encoding class does not output a byte-order marker in a GetBytes() call. You need to use streams (or use a workaround) to get the BOM to output.

The bug with ignored BOM seems to be fixed for Excel 2013. I had same problem with Cyrillic letters, but adding BOM character \uFEFF did help.

It is incredible that there are so many answers but none answers the question:
"When I was asking this question, I asked for a way of opening a UTF-8
CSV file in Excel without any problems for a user,..."
The answer marked as the accepted answer with 200+ up-votes is useless for me because I don't want to give my users a manual how to configure Excel.
Apart from that: this manual will apply to one Excel version but other Excel versions have different menus and configuration dialogs. You would need a manual for each Excel version.
So the question is how to make Excel show UTF8 data with a simple double click?
Well at least in Excel 2007 this is not possible if you use CSV files because the UTF8 BOM is ignored and you will see only garbage. This is already part of the question of Lyubomyr Shaydariv:
"I also tried specifying UTF-8 BOM EF BB BF, but Excel ignores that."
I make the same experience: Writing russian or greek data into a UTF8 CSV file with BOM results in garbage in Excel:
Content of UTF8 CSV file:
Colum1;Column2
Val1;Val2
Авиабилет;Tλληνικ
Result in Excel 2007:
A solution is to not use CSV at all. This format is implemented so stupidly by Microsoft that it depends on the region settings in control panel if comma or semicolon is used as separator. So the same CSV file may open correctly on one computer but on anther computer not. "CSV" means "Comma Separated Values" but for example on a german Windows by default semicolon must be used as separator while comma does not work. (Here it should be named SSV = Semicolon Separated Values) CSV files cannot be interchanged between different language versions of Windows. This is an additional problem to the UTF-8 problem.
Excel exists since decades. It is a shame that Microsoft was not able to implement such a basic thing as CSV import in all these years.
However, if you put the same values into a HTML file and save that file as UTF8 file with BOM with the file extension XLS you will get the correct result.
Content of UTF8 XLS file:
<table>
<tr><td>Colum1</td><td>Column2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Val1</td><td>Val2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Авиабилет</td><td>Tλληνικ</td></tr>
</table>
Result in Excel 2007:
You can even use colors in HTML which Excel will show correctly.
<style>
.Head { background-color:gray; color:white; }
.Red { color:red; }
</style>
<table border=1>
<tr><td class=Head>Colum1</td><td class=Head>Column2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Val1</td><td>Val2</td></tr>
<tr><td class=Red>Авиабилет</td><td class=Red>Tλληνικ</td></tr>
</table>
Result in Excel 2007:
In this case only the table itself has a black border and lines. If you want ALL cells to display gridlines this is also possible in HTML:
<html xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/plain; charset=UTF-8"/>
<xml>
<x:ExcelWorkbook>
<x:ExcelWorksheets>
<x:ExcelWorksheet>
<x:Name>MySuperSheet</x:Name>
<x:WorksheetOptions>
<x:DisplayGridlines/>
</x:WorksheetOptions>
</x:ExcelWorksheet>
</x:ExcelWorksheets>
</x:ExcelWorkbook>
</xml>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tr><td>Colum1</td><td>Column2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Val1</td><td>Val2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Авиабилет</td><td>Tλληνικ</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
This code even allows to specify the name of the worksheet (here "MySuperSheet")
Result in Excel 2007:

We have used this workaround:
Convert CSV to UTF-16 LE
Insert BOM at beginning of file
Use tab as field separator

Had the same problems with PHP-generated CSV files.
Excel ignored the BOM when the Separator was defined via "sep=,\n" at the beginning of the content (but of course after the BOM).
So adding a BOM ("\xEF\xBB\xBF") at the beginning of the content and setting the semicolon as separator via fputcsv($fh, $data_array, ";"); does the trick.

You can convert .csv file to UTF-8 with BOM via Notepad++:
Open the file in Notepad++.
Go to menu Encoding→Convert to UTF-8-BOM.
Go to menu File→Save.
Close Notepad++.
Open the file in Excel .
Worked in Microsoft Excel 2013 (15.0.5093.1000) MSO (15.0.5101.1000) 64-bit from Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 on Windows 8.1 with locale for non-Unicode programs set to "German (Germany)".

Old question but heck, the simplest solution is:
Open CSV in Notepad
Save As -> select the right encoding
Open the new file

I have had the same issue in the past (how to produce files that Excel can read, and other tools can also read). I was using TSV rather than CSV, but the same problem with encodings came up.
I failed to find any way to get Excel to recognize UTF-8 automatically, and I was not willing/able to inflict on the consumers of the files complicated instructions how to open them. So I encoded them as UTF-16le (with a BOM) instead of UTF-8. Twice the size, but Excel can recognize the encoding. And they compress well, so the size rarely (but sadly not never) matters.

As I posted on http://thinkinginsoftware.blogspot.com/2017/12/correctly-generate-csv-that-excel-can.html:
Tell the software developer in charge of generating the CSV to correct it. As a quick workaround you can use gsed to insert the UTF-8 BOM at the beginning of the string:
gsed -i '1s/^\(\xef\xbb\xbf\)\?/\xef\xbb\xbf/' file.csv
This command inserts the UTF-4 BOM if not present. Therefore it is an idempotent command. Now you should be able to double click the file and open it in Excel.

In php you just prepend $bom to your $csv_string:
$bom = sprintf( "%c%c%c", 239, 187, 191); // EF BB BF
file_put_contents( $file_name, $bom . $csv_string );
Tested with MS Excel 2016, php 7.2.4

Simple vba macro for opening utf-8 text and csv files
Sub OpenTextFile()
filetoopen = Application.GetOpenFilename("Text Files (*.txt;*.csv), *.txt;*.csv")
If filetoopen = Null Or filetoopen = Empty Then Exit Sub
Workbooks.OpenText Filename:=filetoopen, _
Origin:=65001, DataType:=xlDelimited, Comma:=True
End Sub
Origin:=65001 is UTF-8.
Comma:True for .csv files distributed in colums
Save it in Personal.xlsb to have it always available.
Personalise excel toolbar adding a macro call button and open files from there.
You can add more formating to the macro, like column autofit , alignment,etc.

Just for help users interested on opening the file on Excel that achieve this thread like me.
I have used the wizard below and it worked fine for me, importing an UTF-8 file.
Not transparent, but useful if you already have the file.
Open Microsoft Excel 2007.
Click on the Data menu bar option.
Click on the From Text icon.
Navigate to the location of the file that you want to import. Click on the filename and then click on the Import button. The Text Import Wizard - Step 1 or 3 window will now appear on the screen.
Choose the file type that best describes your data - Delimited or Fixed Width.
Choose 65001: Unicode (UTF-8) from the drop-down list that appears next to File origin.
Click on the Next button to display the Text Import Wizard - Step 2 or 3 window.
Place a checkmark next to the delimiter that was used in the file you wish to import into Microsoft Excel 2007. The Data preview window will show you how your data will appear based on the delimiter that you chose.
Click on the Next button to display the Text Import Wizard - Step 3 of 3.
Choose the appropriate data format for each column of data that you want to import. You also have the option to not import one or more columns of data if you want.
Click on the Finish button to finish importing your data into Microsoft Excel 2007.
Source: https://www.itg.ias.edu/content/how-import-csv-file-uses-utf-8-character-encoding-0

A truly amazing list of answers, but since one pretty good one is still missing, I'll mention it here: open the csv file with google sheets and save it back to your local computer as an excel file.
In contrast to Microsoft, Google has managed to support UTF-8 csv files so it just works to open the file there. And the export to excel format also just works. So even though this may not be the preferred solution for all, it is pretty fail safe and the number of clicks is not as high as it may sound, especially when you're already logged into google anyway.

This is my working solution:
vbFILEOPEN = "your_utf8_file.csv"
Workbooks.OpenText Filename:=vbFILEOPEN, DataType:=xlDelimited, Semicolon:=True, Local:=True, Origin:=65001
The key is Origin:=65001

Yes it is possible. When writing the stream creating the csv, the first thing to do is this:
myStream.Write(Encoding.UTF8.GetPreamble(), 0, Encoding.UTF8.GetPreamble().Length)

Yes, this is possible. As previously noted by multiple users, there seems to be a problem with excel reading the correct Byte Order Mark when the file is encoded in UTF-8. With UTF-16 it does not seem to have a problem, so it is endemic to UTF-8. The solution I use for this is adding the BOM, TWICE. For this I execute the following sed command twice:
sed -I '1s/^/\xef\xbb\xbf/' *.csv
, where the wildcard can be replaced with any file name. However, this leads to a mutation of the sep= at the beginning of the .csv file. The .csv file will then open normally in excel, but with an extra row with "sep=" in the first cell.
The "sep=" can also be removed in the source .csv itself, but when opening the file with VBA the delimiter should be specified:
Workbooks.Open(name, Format:=6, Delimiter:=";", Local:=True)
Format 6 is the .csv format. Set Local to true, in case there are dates in the file. If Local is not set to true the dates will be Americanized, which in some cases will corrupt the .csv format.

This is not accurately addressing the question but since i stumbled across this and the above solutions didn't work for me or had requirements i couldn't meet, here is another way to add the BOM when you have access to vim:
vim -e -s +"set bomb|set encoding=utf-8|wq" filename.csv

hi i'm using ruby on rails for csv generation. In our application we plan to go for the multi language(I18n) and we faced an issue while viewing I18n content in the CSV file of windows excel.
Was fine with Linux (Ubuntu) and mac.
We identified that windows excel need to be imported the data again to view the actual data. While import we will get more options to choose character set.
But this can’t be educated for each and every user, so solution we looking for is to open just by double click.
Then we identified the way of showing data by open mode and bom in windows excel with the help of aghuddleston gist. Added at reference.
Example I18n content
In Mac and Linux
Swedish : Förnamn
English : First name
In Windows
Swedish : Förnamn
English : First name
def user_information_report(report_file_path, user_id)
user = User.find(user_id)
I18n.locale = user.current_lang
open_mode = "w+:UTF-16LE:UTF-8"
bom = "\xEF\xBB\xBF"
body user, open_mode, bom
end
def headers
headers = [
"ID", "SDN ID",
I18n.t('sys_first_name'), I18n.t('sys_last_name'), I18n.t('sys_dob'),
I18n.t('sys_gender'), I18n.t('sys_email'), I18n.t('sys_address'),
I18n.t('sys_city'), I18n.t('sys_state'), I18n.t('sys_zip'),
I18n.t('sys_phone_number')
]
end
def body tenant, open_mode, bom
File.open(report_file_path, open_mode) do |f|
csv_file = CSV.generate(col_sep: "\t") do |csv|
csv << headers
tenant.patients.find_each(batch_size: 10) do |patient|
csv << [
patient.id, patient.patientid,
patient.first_name, patient.last_name, "#{patient.dob}",
"#{translate_gender(patient.gender)}", patient.email, "#{patient.address_1.to_s} #{patient.address_2.to_s}",
"#{patient.city}", "#{patient.state}", "#{patient.zip}",
"#{patient.phone_number}"
]
end
end
f.write bom
f.write(csv_file)
end
end
Important things to note here is open mode and bom
open_mode = "w+:UTF-16LE:UTF-8"
bom = "\xEF\xBB\xBF"
Before writing the CSV insert BOM
f.write bom
f.write(csv_file)
Windows and Mac
File can be opened directly by double clicking.
Linux (ubuntu)
While opening a file ask for the separator options -> choose “TAB”

Download & install LibreOffice Calc
Open the csv file of your choice in LibreOffice Calc
Thank the heavens that an import text wizard shows up...
...select your delimiter and character encoding options
Select the resulting data in Calc and copy paste to Excel

I faced the same problem a few days ago, and could not find any solution because I cannot use the import from csv feature because it makes everything to be styled as string.
My solution was to first open the file with notpad++ and change the encode to ASCII.
Then just opened the file in excel and it worked as expected.

Working solution for office 365
save in UTF-16 (no LE, BE)
use separator \t
Code in PHP
$header = ['číslo', 'vytvořeno', 'ěščřžýáíé'];
$fileName = 'excel365.csv';
$fp = fopen($fileName, 'w');
fputcsv($fp, $header, "\t");
fclose($fp);
$handle = fopen($fileName, "r");
$contents = fread($handle, filesize($fileName));
$contents = iconv('UTF-8', 'UTF-16', $contents);
fclose($handle);
$handle = fopen($fileName, "w");
fwrite($handle, $contents);
fclose($handle);

This is an old question but I've just encountered had a similar problem and the solution may help others:
Had the same issue where writing out CSV text data to a file, then opening the resulting .csv in Excel shifts all the text into a single column. After having a read of the above answers I tried the following, which seems to sort the problem out.
Apply an encoding of UTF-8 when you create your StreamWriter. That's it.
Example:
using (StreamWriter output = new StreamWriter(outputFileName, false, Encoding.UTF8, 2 << 22)) {
/* ... do stuff .... */
output.Close();
}

If you want to make it fully automatic, one click, or to load automatically into Excel from say a web page, but can't generate proper Excel files, then I would suggest looking at SYLK format as an alternative. OK it is not as simple as CSV but it is text based and very easy to implement and it supports UTF-8 with no issues.
I wrote a PHP class that receives the data and outputs a SYLK file which will open directly in Excel by just clicking the file (or will auto-launch Excel if you write the file to a web page with the correct mime type. You can even add formatting (like bold, format numbers in particular ways etc) and change column sizes, or auto size columns to the text in the columns and all in all the code is probably not more than about 100 lines.
It is dead easy to reverse engineer SYLK by creating a simple spreadsheet and saving as SYLK and then reading it with a text editor. The first block are headers and standard number formats that you will recognise (which you just regurgitate in every file you create), then the data is simply an X/Y coordinate and a value.

I am generating csv files from a simple C# application and had the same problem. My solution was to ensure the file is written with UTF8 encoding, like so:
// Use UTF8 encoding so that Excel is ok with accents and such.
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(path, false, Encoding.UTF8))
{
SaveCSV(writer);
}
I originally had the following code, with which accents look fine in Notepad++ but were getting mangled in Excel:
using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(path))
{
SaveCSV(writer);
}
Your mileage may vary - I'm using .NET 4 and Excel from Office 365.

I tried everything I could find on this thread and similar, nothing worked fully. However, importing to google sheets and simply downloading as csv worked like a charm. Try it out if you come to my frustration point.

It's March 2022, and it seems we cannot use both a BOM and the sep=... line.
Adding the sep=\t or similar, makes Excel ignore the BOM.
Using a semicolon seems to be a default Excel understands, in which case we can skip the sep=... line and it works.
This is Microsoft 365 with Excel version 2110 build 14527.20276.

Found a solution for ASP.NET Core to download CSV's as UTF8 with POM:
byte[] csvBytes = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(csvString);
UTF8Encoding utf8 = new UTF8Encoding(true);
byte[] bom = utf8.GetPreamble();
var result = bom.Concat(csvBytes).ToArray();
return new FileContentResult(result, MediaTypeHeaderValue.Parse("text/csv; charset=utf-8"));
Excel is recognizes the downloaded CSV file than as UTF8.

Just sharing a comprehensive function that might make your life easier working with CSV files.... please note last function argument in relation to this topic
function array2csv($data, $file = '', $download = true, $mode = 'w+', $delimiter = ',', $enclosure = '"', $escape_char = "\\", $addUnicodeBom = false)
{
$return = false;
if ($file == '') {
$f = fopen('php://memory', 'r+');
} else {
$f = fopen($file, $mode);
}
if ($addUnicodeBom) {
$utf8_with_bom = chr(239) . chr(187) . chr(191);
fwrite($f, $utf8_with_bom);
}
foreach ($data as $line => $item) {
fputcsv($f, $item, $delimiter, $enclosure, $escape_char);
}
rewind($f);
if ($download == true) {
$return = stream_get_contents($f);
} else {
$return = true;
}
return $return;
}

First save the Excel spreadsheet as Unicode text. Open the TXT file using Internet explorer and click "Save as" TXT Encoding - choose the appropriate encoding, i.e. for Win Cyrillic 1251

String is showing different windows and Unix system special charactors are getting formatting

I am uploading xml file into server using java API there i am reading the xml file at the server using parser. So the xml file one string having the special characters that string formatting which we can't readable.Please find the below is the input xml tag from windowsand out put xml tag in UNIX.
input Windows:
<ns:details>CN=Jiri Manak, SERIALNUMBER=A417280, GIVENNAME=Jiri, SU=Maňák, O=Atos, C=SK</ns:details>
output UNIX:
<ns:details>CN=Jiri Manak, SERIALNUMBER=A417280, GIVENNAME=Jiri, SU=MaÅák, O=Atos, C=SK</ns:details>
Could you please help me how to avoid these formatting strings.
I want to see both input and output are the same.
Thanks
Regards
Vijaya Kumar

For reference i am attaching the input xml file.
Thanks
Vijay

How to break up long continuous lines in log by inserting line breaks on Solaris 10

I need your assistance to chop a single continuous line from a log file of HL7 messages, into individual lines such as the following in using Unix commands / Java or Both:
Timestamp : 20130221 001805
Code : OUT031
Severity : F
Component : cmHL7OutboundBuild_jcdOutboundBuild1/cmHL7OutboundBuild/dpPRODHL7Outbound
Description : Last HL7 Message read <MSH|^~\&|target application|hostname|source application|A212|201302210016||ORM^O01|62877102|D|2.2|||ER
PID||.|0625176^^^00040||JOHN^SMITH^ ||19390112|F||4|address||^^^^^^93271081||||||41253603422
PV1|1||ED^^^40||||||name of physician||||||||physician operator id
ORC|SC||13-4529701-TFT-0|13-4529701|P|||||||name of physician
OBR|1||13-4529701-TFT-0|0360000^THYROID FUNCTION TESTS^1||201302212108|201302212102|||||||201302212108||name of physician||.|||13-4529701|201302210016||department|P||^^^201302212108
> Exception:com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLIntegrityConstraintViolationException: Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (`schema/table`, CONSTRAINT `table_ibfk_request_order_panel` FOREIGN KEY (`fk_gp_latest_request_order_panel`) REFERENCES `gp_request_order_panel` (`gp_request_order_panel_seq`))
SendEmail : Y
The issue is that all 11 lines are wrapped around in one continuous line which made up a single record, followed by the next record of another 11 lines and so on Solaris 10 Unix server. Yet
the same log would display properly when ftped over to a desktop Windows side. As a result, I am looking for a solution, possibly a combination of Unix & Java to break down each record of
11 lines on their own and the same thing for the next record....
Below is a break down on what I believe need to be done on the Solaris 10 server:
( i ) Would be great if this log could be converted to Windows ASCII format but staying on the Solaris 10 server, like the one being ftped to Windows. When the same file is ftped from
Windows back to Solaris 10 server, it reverted back to its original 1 continuous line format.
( ii ) Otherwise, break it down line by line or insert and end of line but where to?
I have tried various Unix string manipulated commands such as sed, awk, grep, fold, cut, unix2dos including from
Bash: how to find and break up long lines by inserting continuation character and newline? without success.
Your assistance would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Jack

This is a windows text file (windows carriage control) since it displays ok in Windows but not UNIX.
Solaris has a dos2unix command to handle this issue.
dos2unix filename > newfilename
Try that. To see what I mean use the vi editor on "filename" in the example above. You will see ^M characters in the file. UNIX does not use those for formatting lines.
If you have the vim editor it will read "long lines". Or try od -c < filename | more to see the ^M or ascii 13 characters. od will show them as \r I'm reasonably sure the issue is that the carriage control on the file prevents UNIX from seeing the lines. Try the od approach.

Digester: The element type "user" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "</user>"

I'm using Digester to parse a xml file and I get the following error:
May 3, 2011 6:41:25 PM org.apache.commons.digester.Digester fatalError
SEVERE: Parse Fatal Error at line 2336608 column 3: The element type "user" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "</user>".
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The element type "user" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "</user>".
However 2336608 is the last line of my text file. I guess I'm opening a tag and I never close it. Do you know how can I find it and fix it, in big text files ?
thanks

Write another script which scans each file of the line and whenever it finds an open <user> tag, increments a counter and prints
line number 1234 <user> opened (1 open total)
and whenever it finds a close </user> tag, decrements the counter prints
line number 4546 </user> closed (0 open total)
Since you have one more opening tag than closing tag, the final output of this script will tell you that 1 tag was left open. However, assuming that your XML model does not allow for nested <user> tags, then you can assume the problemsome declaration is wherever you see the output of line number ... <user> opened (2 open total).

$ grep -Hin "</\?user>" Text.xml will print out every line with either or . If they're not nested, then you should be able to inspect that output fand find the missing close tag (when immediately follows . A script do do the same:
https://gist.github.com/953837
This assumes that the open and close tags are on different lines.

Use tidy -xml -e <your-xml-file>. http://tidy.sourceforge.net/
Tidy is a great little tool for validating HTML, and in XML mode (-xml above) it will validate XML as well.
It prints out line and column numbers for parse errors.
Most of the major package managers (apt, port, etc.) will have pre-built packages for it.

I think there is no need to start scripting for detecting xml errors.
You can use the w3 xml validator for instance
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_validator.asp
I just pasted a 15 mb xml in there and I managed to fix it quite easily. You can also input the xml as a url if you have the possibility to upload it somewhere. Java reported the error in some place which seemed fine, but this tool localized the actual error, and after correcting that, java didn't error anymore.
There are many types of xml errors, and are not all related to the nested structure, so it is best to just use a well known tool for this. For instance, my error was an argument error(I was missing a ") but java detected a nesting problem.