Question

I’m having problem understanding Regular Expression. Here is what I’ve got

$pat = “/<[^>]*>/”;

This pattern works well in removing all the HTML tags. But when it’s used to remove <?php ?> tags, it has problem when -> exist in between the tag.

i.e

<?php
  $obj->name;
  $obj->reset();
?>
some other things outside

Intended result

some other things outside

The actual result

  name;
  $obj->reset();
?>
some other things outside

So, how can I exclude the -> in my search?

Answer 1

You can either code in a special exception for the <?php ?> delimiters, so it takes precedence over the generic rule:

$pat = "/<[?].*?[?]>|<[^>]*>/";

Or you use an assertion (?=...) and allow -> as alternative. Wah no, that’s probably too difficult.