regex wont find a match

Question

I am trying to pull some info here is my regex

<tr>
<td>([^<]+)<i><a href="([^<]+)" title="([^<]+)">([^<]+)<\/a><\/i><sup id="([^<]+)" class="([^<]+)"><a href="([^<]+)"><span>[<\/span>1<span>]<\/span><\/a><\/sup><\/td>
<td><a href="([^<]+)" title="([^<]+)">([^<]+)<\/a><\/td>
<td><a href="([^<]+)" title="([^<]+)">([^<]+)<\/a><\/td>
<td>([^<]+)<\/td>
<td>([^<]+)<\/td>
</tr>

here is sample html

<tr>
<td><i><a href="/wiki/3Xtreme" title="3Xtreme">3Xtreme</a></i><sup id="cite_ref-18" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-18"><span>[</span>18<span>]</span></a></sup></td>
<td><a href="/wiki/989_Studios" title="989 Studios">989 Studios</a></td>
<td><a href="/wiki/989_Studios" title="989 Studios">989 Studios</a></td>
<td>1999-03-31<sup>NA</sup></td>
<td>NA</td>
</tr>

As of now i just want to get the data to find matches.. Can you see any reason why it would not match this?

for all the haters.... I dont care about your options on if i should use regex on html or not.. For this case it will work great. I have one page , the data i need is in a table. Once i can get the data i will save it to my db and never have to use the regex again.. Soooo if your comment or answer is about your option on using regex with html.. dont post.

Your first code is supposed to be a regex ? It would at least need some escaping. — Denys Séguret, Mar 31 '13 at 16:12
Stop parsing HTML with regular expressions [before it's too late](http://stackoverflow.com/q/1732348/1258041). — Lev Levitsky, Mar 31 '13 at 16:13
and why stop? i just need to get some data that i can throw into a db.. regular expressions should be great for this — Glen Morse, Mar 31 '13 at 16:22
It would help to know the language or text editor being used. Different regex engines have different capabilities. — Kenneth K., Mar 31 '13 at 17:11

Loamhoof · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-31T21:06:35.983

1

...Second line:

<td>([^<]+)<i>

cannot hope to match:

<td><i>

as you put a '+' equivalent to '{1,}' while there is nothing between your tags. Didn't check the rest of your regex, but anyway it can't work.

Edit:
Please also correct the "([^<]+)" and so on (I hope you see why)... And edit your regex when you correct it.

Edit 2:
Seeing as it's quite a disaster (sorry but it's the truth :/): please consider replacing all your ([^<]+) things that won't work for all your cases by a simple (.*?)

Edit 3:
[ and ] must be escaped. (\d will help you catch numbers)

edited Mar 31 '13 at 21:06

answered Mar 31 '13 at 20:38

Loamhoof

8,293
27
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perfect! still a noob at this but what is difference in (.*?) and ([^<]+) – Glen Morse Mar 31 '13 at 21:06
1

Nothing in common, it's well explained in the linked page. But adding a ? to a quantifier makes it "lazy" instead of "greedy". So basically, it will try to catch the smallest string and will move on asap (note: there still can be a comeback). The second will just prevent to catch "<". – Loamhoof Mar 31 '13 at 21:08

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 31 '13 at 20:59

1

<span>[<\/span>1<span>]<\/span>

Lots of problems here: you must escape the brackets and obviously 1 won't match 18

answered Mar 31 '13 at 20:59

bobrobbob

1,251
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regex wont find a match

2 Answers2