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xmlstarlet:tldr:7d134

xmlstarlet: XML document can also be piped from stdin.
$ ${cat filename-xml} | xmlstarlet format
try on your machine

The command you mentioned consists of two parts, separated by the pipe symbol |.

  1. ${cat filename-xml}: This part is using the cat command to read the contents of a file specified by filename-xml. The ${...} syntax is often used in shell scripting or command substitution to refer to the value of a variable. In this case, filename-xml is expected to be a variable holding the actual filename. The output of cat filename-xml is then passed to the next part of the command through the pipe.

  2. xmlstarlet format: This part runs the xmlstarlet command with the action format. xmlstarlet is a command-line tool used for querying, editing, and formatting XML files. The format action is used to reformat the XML input according to a specific style or indentation. In this case, the input received from the previous command (cat filename-xml) will be reformatted by xmlstarlet using the default formatting settings.

In summary, the command takes the contents of a file specified by a variable named filename-xml, displays the original XML content using the cat command, and then passes it to xmlstarlet to reformat the XML output.

This explanation was created by an AI. In most cases those are correct. But please always be careful and never run a command you are not sure if it is safe.
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