Regular expression to remove HTML tags from a string

You should not attempt to parse HTML with regex. HTML is not a regular language, so any regex you come up with will likely fail on some esoteric edge case. Please refer to the seminal answer to this question for specifics. While mostly formatted as a joke, it makes a very good point.

The following examples are Java, but the regex will be similar — if not identical — for other languages.

String target = someString.replaceAll("<[^>]*>", "");

Assuming your non-html does not contain any < or > and that your input string is correctly structured.

If you know they’re a specific tag — for example you know the text contains only <td> tags, you could do something like this:

String target = someString.replaceAll("(?i)<td[^>]*>", "");

Edit: Ωmega brought up a good point in a comment on another post that this would result in multiple results all being squished together if there were multiple tags.

For example, if the input string were <td>Something</td><td>Another Thing</td>, then the above would result in SomethingAnother Thing.

In a situation where multiple tags are expected, we could do something like:

String target = someString.replaceAll("(?i)<td[^>]*>", " ").replaceAll("\\s+", " ").trim();

This replaces the HTML with a single space, then collapses whitespace, and then trims any on the ends.

Related Posts:

  1. OR condition in Regex
  2. Using or ‘|’ in regex [duplicate]
  3. What is a Context Free Grammar?
  4. What does \’.- mean in a Regular Expression
  5. How can I exclude one word with grep?
  6. How can I validate an email address using a regular expression?
  7. Regular expression to match a line that doesn’t contain a word
  8. Difference between \b and \B in regex
  9. Regex: ignore case sensitivity
  10. Python regex AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘group’
  11. Regular Expression for alphanumeric and underscores
  12. What is the difference between the regular expressions [^\d\s] and [\D\S]
  13. Regular Expression for alphanumeric and underscores
  14. grep –ignore-case –only
  15. Regex AND operator
  16. python re.split() to split by spaces, commas, and periods, but not in cases like 1,000 or 1.50
  17. python re.split() to split by spaces, commas, and periods, but not in cases like 1,000 or 1.50
  18. Regex to test if string begins with http:// or https://
  19. Regular expression negative lookahead
  20. Regular Expression to match string starting with a specific word
  21. Regular Expressions: Is there an AND operator?
  22. Regular expression to match standard 10 digit phone number
  23. Regular Expression.how to add optional character at end of regex
  24. Regular Expression with wildcards to match any character
  25. What is a non-capturing group in regular expressions?
  26. Split string on whitespace in Python
  27. How to validate an email address in PHP
  28. What is a non-capturing group in regular expressions?
  29. Regular expression to match standard 10 digit phone number
  30. How to use Regular Expressions (Regex) in Microsoft Excel both in-cell and loops
  31. Python string.replace regular expression
  32. How to use Regular Expressions (Regex) in Microsoft Excel both in-cell and loops
  33. Python string.replace regular expression
  34. Symbol for any number of any characters in regex?
  35. Grep and Python
  36. Regex – Does not contain certain Characters
  37. How to replace ” \ ” with ” \\ ” in java
  38. A regular expression to exclude a word/string
  39. Regex how to match an optional character
  40. How to validate an email address in JavaScript
  41. Using Bash regex match (=~) where regex includes quotes (” characters)
  42. Regular expression to match a word or its prefix
  43. How can I remove punctuation from input text in Java?
  44. Regular expression for exact match of a string
  45. Using the star sign in grep
  46. Regex optional group
  47. Regex for string contains?
  48. Regular Expression – Validate Gmail addresses
  49. Java; String replace (using regular expressions)?
  50. How can I remove punctuation from input text in Java?
  51. How can I output only captured groups with sed?
  52. How to negate specific word in regex?
  53. What is the grep equivalent in Python?
  54. javascript HTML from document.body.innerHTML
  55. Which regular expression operator means ‘Don’t’ match this character?
  56. Python re.split() vs split()
  57. Regex Explanation ^.*$ [duplicate]
  58. Negative matching using grep (match lines that do not contain foo)
  59. How to exclude a specific string constant?
  60. How to replace a whole line with sed?
  61. How to validate phone number using PHP?
  62. Validate phone number with JavaScript
  63. Can a URL contain a semicolon and still be valid?
  64. How is \\n and \\\n interpreted by the expanded regular expression?
  65. Regex to match only uppercase “words” with some exceptions
  66. Regular Expression to reformat a US phone number in Javascript
  67. Regex to match only letters
  68. Finding the complement of a DFA?
  69. RegEx to find two or more consecutive chars
  70. Regex to match an optional ‘+’ symbol followed by any number of digits
  71. Regular expressions in C: examples?
  72. How to ignore whitespace in a regular expression subject string?
  73. Regular expression for a string that does not start with a sequence
  74. Regex: matching up to the first occurrence of a character
  75. Regex credit card number tests
  76. Regular expression – starting and ending with a character string
  77. RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags
  78. How do I match any character across multiple lines in a regular expression?
  79. Regex that matches integers in between whitespace or start/end of string only
  80. Regular Expressions- Match Anything
  81. What is the difference between square brackets and parentheses in a regex?
  82. My Vim replace with a regex is throwing a `E488: Trailing characters`
  83. Escaping Parentheses in Regex
  84. How to replace a string in an existing file in Perl
  85. Regex empty string or email
  86. Regex to validate date formats dd/mm/YYYY, dd-mm-YYYY, dd.mm.YYYY, dd mmm YYYY, dd-mmm-YYYY, dd/mmm/YYYY, dd.mmm.YYYY with Leap Year Support
  87. Regex difference: (\w+)? and (\w*)
  88. extract shortcodes from string
  89. preg_replace and comment_form_defaults
  90. 404 regular-expression advice needed
  91. How to use a variable as a className inside preg_match_all parameters?
  92. How to set up redirects for category paginated pages after adding /category/ to permalink
  93. Adding span tags to post titles using regex
  94. Remove Custom HTML Posts Using Regex
  95. Regexes allow only [a-z][A-Z][0-9] and –
  96. HTML regex convert to titlecase
  97. Call Shortcode Attribute Value within another function
  98. RegExp to EXCLUDE strip HTML (FOR SOMME) comments
  99. Regex For Extracting First 4 letters of search term
  100. Use Regex Redirection via htsaccess for RSS Feeds WordPress

Leave a Comment

tech