Boolean Assignment with If statements

Question

I am trying to solve a problem to remove HTML tags from a string. I realize that regular expressions are a better solution, but I'd like to figure out what is going wrong here.

The idea is to assume that we monitor being in a tag using 'tag', with it's value being modified by comparing the value of each char.

The problem is, the value of tag is never changed:

def remove_tag(s):
    tag = True

    for c in s:
        print "c = %s" % c
        if (c == '<'):
            print 'start_tag'
            tag == True
            print tag
        elif (c == '>'):
            print 'end tag'
            tag == False
            print tag

Running:

remove_tag("<h1>Title</h1>")

Produces:

c = <
start_tag
True
c = h
c = 1
c = >
end tag
True
c = T
c = i
c = t
c = l
c = e
c = <
start_tag
True
c = /
c = h
c = 1
c = >
end tag
True
None

I am baffled as to why 'end tag' is printed but the value 'False' does not get assigned to tag.

You may wish to steer clear of the subject of using regular expressions with HTML on SO... ;) http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/83109 — David M, Aug 06 '12 at 10:07

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 06 '12 at 10:05

9

These lines are comparisons, not assignments:

tag == True
tag == False

You want

tag = True

answered Aug 06 '12 at 10:05

DSM

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Boolean Assignment with If statements

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