How to convert this regular expression into Python

Question

I want to use this regular expression in Python:

 <(?:"[^"]*"['"]*|'[^']*'['"]*|[^'">])+>

def removeHtmlTags(page):
    p = re.compile(r'XXXX')
    return p.sub('', page)

It seems that I cannot directly substitute the complex regular expression into the above function.

Are you escaping the apostrophes in the regex with a backslash? Can we see the real code you have that isn't working? — Tom, Mar 10 '10 at 14:00
that helps me: https://regex101.com/ (check the python flavor) — JinSnow, Feb 09 '17 at 20:42

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 10 '10 at 13:59

3

Works fine here. You're probably having trouble because of the quotes. Just triple-quote it:

def removeHtmlTags(page):
    p = re.compile(r'''<(?:"[^"]*"['"]*|'[^']*'['"]*|[^'">])+>''')
    return p.sub('', page)

answered Mar 10 '10 at 13:59

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 10 '10 at 14:04

0

If you need to remove HTML tags, this should do it:

import re

def removeHtmlTags(page):
    pattern = re.compile(r'\<[^>]+\>', re.I)
    return pattern.sub('', page)

answered Mar 10 '10 at 14:04

mcrisc

That wasn't the question, but the point of the original regex is to allow for angle brackets within attribute values. – Alan Moore Mar 10 '10 at 14:30

2 Answers2