HTML tags - ignore nested

[onez]

Lets say you have a HTML tables nested in each other but you want the whole table (ignoring the inner childs end tags) how do you do this.

this doesnt work:
<table(.)*?(<table(.)*?</table>)*(.)*?</table>

Example
sdfsdfsd<table> lskdjfsd<table>dsklfj</table>sldkfj</table>asdfsd

 

[j2associates]

Lets say you have a HTML tables nested in each other but you want the whole table (ignoring the inner childs end tags) how do you do this.

this doesnt work:
<table(.)*?(<table(.)*?</table>)*(.)*?</table>

Example
sdfsdfsd<table> lskdjfsd<table>dsklfj</table>sldkfj</table>asdfsd

Your example shows the nested tags as being on the same line. If you set your options so that ^ matches the beginning of a line, then this should work:

^[^<]*(<.*>).*

Good Luck!

 

[onez]

Solution

I think this is the solution, modified it from an expression that ignored nested parenthesis.

<table>(?>[^<>]+|<table>(?<DEPTH>)|</table>(?<-DEPTH>))*(?(DEPTH)(?!))</table>

Come on man, why would I be searching for HTML tables on one line?

 

[j2associates]

I think this is the solution, modified it from an expression that ignored nested parenthesis.

<table>(?>[^<>]+|<table>(?<DEPTH>)|</table>(?<-DEPTH>))*(?(DEPTH)(?!))</table>

It seems like (<table>)(.*)(</table>) should work if you set the dot to match newlines. Since the RegEx is greedy it should then grab everything. I added the parentheses in case you needed to only work with the stuff inside the outside tags.

As an aside, have you ever been to www.RegExBuddy.com? Fabulous tool for $30 US and it is exceedingly rare for email support to be more than 24 hours.

 

[decrypt]

Get the pages html and then use an xml parser instead of regular expressions. Ive done it before in php and it worked pretty well