I don't know if anyone on here has touched regular expressions yet, but I'm trying to learn them, so here goes.

I have some text I'm messing with removing certain HTML elements from.

<b>Bold</b>
<a href="anchor text">Anchor</a>
<i>Italic</i>
<strong>Strong</strong>
<em>em</em>
<blockquote>Blockquote</blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Ordered List</li>
</ol>
<ul>
<li>Ordered List</li>
</ul>
<p>Paragraph</p>
<sup>Superscript</sup>
<br />
<sub>Subscript</sub>
<div>Div</div>
<img src="something-cool.jpg" />
<h1>Heading 1</h1>

Now, when I apply this regular expression:

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

I get the following, which is what I expected:

</b>
</a>
</i>
<strong>Strong</strong>
<em>em</em>
</blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Ordered List</li>
</ol>
<ul>
<li>Ordered List</li>
</ul>
<p>Paragraph</p>
<sup>Superscript</sup>
<sub>Subscript</sub>
<div>Div</div>
<h1>Heading 1</h1>

Which is what I expected (since the pattern doesn't check for a closing tag for </b>, </a>, </i>, and </blockquote>

However, what's weird is that I get the same thing when I apply the following expressions, I get the exact same thing!

</?([^bai](.*))>
</*([^bai](.*))>
<\047*([^bai](.*))>
<\047?([^bai](.*))>
</{0,1}([^bai](.*))>
<\047{0,1}([^bai](.*))>

I don't understand why that would be, since the pattern should match for both </ (which it doesn't) and < (which it does).

Any help? Thanks.

you need to combine two patterns, one for the start tags

<[bai][^>]*>

and one for the end tags

<\/[bai]>*

so the whole RegEx pattern will be

<[bai][^>]*>|<\/[bai]>*

the | (pipe) symbol is the "alternation" operator, it tells the regex to match everything to the left of it or everything to the right of it

Thanks, dude.

It wasn't quite what I wanted to accomplish, but it was enough to get me there (which means it's my fault for not explaining clearly.) Got what I wanted.