Remove a specific latex command from the text AND closing bracket behind it

Question

How to remove a specific latex command from the text AND closing bracket behind it, but to keep the text inside the brackets? The command in the following example to remove is \edit{<some staff>}. \edit{ and } should be removed, whereas <some staff> should be left unchanged.

Please fill free to suggest SED, or AWK, or Perl or whatever will do the job

senseless example:

We \edit{Introduce a} model for analyzing \emph{data} from various
experimental designs, \edit{such as paired or \url{http://www/}
longitudinal; as was done 1984 by NN \cite{mycitation} and by NNN
\cite{mycitation2}}.

Note that there might be one or more latex commands in the form \command{smth} inside \edit{} statements. \command{smth} should be left as it was

Output:

We Introduce a model for analyzing \emph{data} from various
experimental designs, such as paired or \url{http://www/}
longitudinal; as was done 1984 by NN \cite{mycitation} and by NNN
\cite{mycitation2}.

PS. I am introducing a lot of small edits into my tex file. I want those edits to be highlighted, so my collaborator can see them. But afterwards I would like to remove all highlights and to send the text to a reviewer.

The question was originally asked at AWK/SED Remove a specific latex command from the text AND closing bracket behind it. But example there was too soft

Answer 1

Here's one that works in the simple case of only one level of commands within an \edit{...}, at maximum:

perl -00 -lpe 's,\\edit\{( (?: [^}\\]* | \\[a-z]+\{[^}]*\} )+ )\},$1,xg'

The middle part (?: [^}\\]* | \\[a-z]+\{[^}]*\} )+ has to alternatives: [^}\\]* matches any string with no closing brace or backslash (regular text); and \\[a-z]+\{[^}]*\} matches anything with backslash, lowercase letters, and then a matched pair of braces (like \url{whatever...}). The grouping (?:...)+ repeats those alternatives, and the outer parenthesis capture, so we can replace the match with just the part inside \edit{...}.

-00 tells Perl to handle the input one paragraph at time, with empty lines separating paragraphs. If you need to handle tags that span paragraphs, change that to -0 to handle the whole input in one go.

For your example, this seems to work, giving:

We Introduce a model for analyzing \emph{data} from various
experimental designs, such as paired or \url{http://www/}
longitudinal; as was done 1984 by NN \cite{mycitation} and by NNN
\cite{mycitation2}.

However, it (predictably) fails for an input with two levels of commands inside the \edit{...}:

Some \edit{\somecmd{\emph{nested} commands} here}.

Turns to:

Some \somecmd{\emph{nested} commands here}.

(the wrong closing brace is removed)

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Actually handling balanced parenthesis is somewhat more tricky, it's discussed e.g. in this question on SO: Perl regular expression: match nested brackets.