Re: Need a regex searching html code

Todd Benson wrote:
On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 1:19 PM, Jari Williamsson
<jari.williamsson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mark Thomas wrote:
> All the regex solutions provided will break with the following
> perfectly valid HTML:
>
> <div class="info">
> <h5 >Tagline:</h5>
> Yippee Ki Yay Mo - John 6:27
> </div>
>
> This is one of many reasons it is a BAD idea to use regexes to parse
> HTML. Regular expressions are simply not the right tool for the job.

Sorry if I'm missing the point:
---
the_text = %q{

<div class="info">
<h5 >Tagline:</h5>
Yippee Ki Yay Mo - John 6:27
</div>
}

the_text.each_line do |line|
puts "Within DIV tags: #{line}" if (line=~/<div/)..(line=~/<\/div/)
puts "Within H5 tags: #{line}" if (line=~/<h5/)..(line=~/<\/h5/)
end
---

Result:
Within DIV tags: <div class="info">
Within DIV tags: <h5 >Tagline:</h5>
Within H5 tags: <h5 >Tagline:</h5>
Within DIV tags: Yippee Ki Yay Mo - John 6:27
Within DIV tags: </div>

What if you have a div inside a div? Although, the OP said "any"
legitimate html inside a div, there's part of me that begs the
question: which div?

Sure, for real-life HTML with nested tags it'll break. I just wanted to
point out that for simple parsing needs (as the example that I replied
to) regexps can find both beginning and end tags.



Best regards,

Jari Williamsson

.

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