Question

I’m trying to match hashtags in a string that also has html elements in it.

So I want to match # then go back to the first non-word character except when that non-word character is in a html element in which case keep going.

I started with #[\w]* for the basic case then tried to exclude tags with #[\w]*(?!([^<]+)?|>) but I’m getting no joy.

Example

First #Match1 tag then another #Mat<span class="tag"></span>ch2, #<span class="tag"></span>Match3.

Matches

#Match1

#Mat<span id="selectionBoundary"></span>ch2

#<span id="selectionBoundary"></span>Match3

Unfortunately I can’t strip the html elements and the match should contain the element.

Thanks

Answer 1

Looks like #([\w]|(<[^>]+>))* will do the job