Regex to match starting node of XML without the tag name [closed]

Question

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I have XML like

<A>
 <B>
  <C>
   Hello World
  </C>
 </B>
</A>

I want to replace the starting tag's "<" with "<ns:" in each tag resulting the following XML

<ns:A>
 <ns:B>
  <ns:C>
   Hello World
  </ns:C>
 </ns:B>
</ns:A>

What should be the regular expression I should use in text editor to replace and include the namesapace

I was trying to use regex [<][^/] but it selects the 1st character of the starting tag also which I don't want to replace.

Note: I have the above requirement for manual editing purpose in an editor where regex replace is supported. I was not going to do the above task programmatically .And the output XML fragment requested is an inner part of the complete XML , hence namespace URI is not mentioned

Answer 1

Never attempt to manipulate XML with regular expressions. Use proper XML processing tools such as XSLT. This task is very easy to do with XSLT: it's a single template rule

<xsl:template match="*" xmlns:ns1="zzzzzzzz">
  <xsl:element name="ns1:{local-name()}>
    <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

I'm assuming of course that you want to add a namespace declaration for the prefix ns1. If you want to create badly-formed output in which the namespace isn't declared, then XSLT won't let you do that - which is of course why you should be using it.