RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

Posted by Jeff on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Jeff
Published on 2009-11-13T22:38:26Z Indexed on 2010/04/05 1:43 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 587

Filed under:

regex

|

html

I need to match all of these opening tags:

<p>
<a href="foo">

But not these:

<br />
<hr class="foo" />

I came up with this and wanted to make sure I've got it right. I am only capturing the a-z.

<([a-z]+) *[^/]*?>

I believe it says:

Find a less-than, then
Find (and capture) a-z one or more times, then
Find zero or more spaces, then
Find any character zero or more times, greedy, except /, then
Find a greater-than

Do I have that right? And more importantly, what do you think? =)

EDIT:

Hmm, which answer to mark as correct? For the record, ALL the answers are appreciated. Many thanks!

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about regex

Find multiple regex in each line and skip result if one of the regex doesn't match

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a list of variables: variables = ['VariableA', 'VariableB','VariableC'] which I'm going to search for, line by line ifile = open("temp.txt",'r') d = {} match = zeros(len(variables)) for line in ifile: emptyCells=0 for i in range(len(variables)): regex = r'('+variables[i]+r')[:|=|\(](-… >>> More
OWASP Regex Repository: Is this regex correct?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I was looking at the regular expression for validating various data types from the (OWASP Regex Repository). One of the regular expressions in there is called safetext and looks like: ^[a-zA-Z0-9\s.\-]+$ My first question is: Is this regular expression correct? complementary question If this… >>> More
Make a Perl-style regex interpreter behave like a basic or extended regex interpreter

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a tool to help students learn regular expressions. I will probably be writing it in Java. The idea is this: the student types in a regular expression and the tool shows which parts of a text will get matched by the regex. Simple enough. But I want to support several different regex… >>> More
JS regex isn't matching, even thought it works with a regex tester

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm writing a piece of client-side javascript code that takes a function and finds the derivative of it, however, the regex that's supposed to match with the power rule fails to work in the context of the javascript program, even though it sucessfully matches when it's used with an independent regex… >>> More
c# RegEx with "|"

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to be able to check for a pattern with | in them. For example an expression like d*|*t should return true for a string like "dtest|test". I'm no regex hero so I just tried a couple of things, like: Regex Pattern = new Regex("s*\|*d"); //unable to build because of single backslash Regex Pattern… >>> More

Related posts about html

Install usblib package - Ubuntu

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I need the package libusb for another package I am installing. I tried the following which seemed to install the package, sudo apt-get install libusb-dev but when I try to install the other package I get, configure: error: Package requirements (libusb-1.0 >= 0.9.1) were not met: No package… >>> More
Prevent malicious vulnerability scan increasing load on a server

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi all, this week we have been suffering some malicious vulnerability scans to our servers, increasing the load on them, making them nearly unusable. The attack is easy to defend, just blocking the offending ip, but only after discovering it. Is there any form of prevent it? Is it normal that… >>> More
can't install psycopg2 in my env on mac os x lion

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I tried install psycopg2 via pip in my virtual env, but got this error: ld: library not found for -lpq (full log here: http://pastebin.com/XdmGyJ4u ) I tried install postgres 9.1 from .dmg and via port, (gksks)iMac-Alexander:~ lorddaedra$ locate libpq /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.7.sdk/usr/include/libpq /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10… >>> More
Bitnami redmine error SVN

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I'm installing the Bitnami Redmine stack (redmine + subversion). Firstly I install configure and test it locally (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS). And everything is OK. I install Bitnami stack on server (Red Hat 4.4.7-4) and configure SVN. I commit files into SVN and connect project into Redmine with SVN repository… >>> More
Can the .htaccess file slow down a website to a crawl? If so, are there better ways to solve these problems with different rewrite rules and such?

as seen on Pro Webmasters - Search for 'Pro Webmasters'
here is my htaccess file...... RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/patients/billing/FAQ_billing\.html$ [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/patients/billing/getintouch\.html$ RewriteRule ^patients/billing/(.*)\.html$ $1.php [L,NC] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/patients/findadoctor/a\.html$ [OR] RewriteCond… >>> More