Question

I have some text that has HTML hyper-links in it.
I want to remove the hyperlinks, but only specific ones.

e.g. I start with this:

This is text <a href="link/to/somewhere">Link to Remove</a> and more text with another link <a href="/link/to/somewhere/else">Keep this link</a>

I want to have:

This is text and more text with another link <a href="/link/to/somewhere/else">Keep this link</a> 

I have this RegEx expression,

<a\s[^>]*>.*?</a>

… but it matches ALL of the links.

What do I need to add to that expression to match only the links with the link-text ‘Remove’ (for example) in it?

thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You’ll probably get a lot of feedback not to use regular expressions on HTML… but if you do decide to use one, try this:

 <a\s[^>]*>.*?Remove.*?</a>

This is where “Remove” lies somewhere in the link text.