Question

For example if I have this html:

<div>this is a test < text</div>

the < after the test is an error and the right html should be

<div>this is a test &lt; text</div>

But I have a lot of html files that by error were not encoded and i need fix this error so i can parse them later. The original source of data is not available so the only option is to fix this html I have.

Well, the sames applies to the > character and to text that has both < and > characters Like “<2000> – <2004>”. I would like to hear ideas for algorithms or libraries that can help me. Thanks.

Note: the html sample above is a sample and the work should be done on big html files.

Answer 1

I’d suggest this:

identify and map locations of all known tags, like <div> and </a>.
Replace < and > everywhere outside the map you built in step 1.