regex - alphanumeric with space, but exclude only spaces without alphanumeric chars

Question

I am trying to get a match on a tags which have some text preceding it few samples :

<p> some text here <a href="#">and here</a></p> <!--want match--><br/>
<p> some text here and number 55 <a href="#">and here</a>  </p> <!--want match--><br/>
<p>  <a href="#">and here</a></p> <!--do not want match--><br/>

Now when I use this regex

>[\w,.-_|]+<a (.*?)</a>\s*<

I do not get a match on any of these. However, this regex

>[\s\w,.-_|]+<a (.*?)<\/a>\s*<

gives match on all 3, where I want only first 2 as match

The problem here is "\s" whitespace. I dont mind whitespace between text, but if there is only whitespace and no text, there should be no match.

How can I do that?

**Don't**: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags — Jan, Feb 12 '16 at 07:42

Ed' · Answer 1 · 2016-02-14T00:32:38.333

0

I'm not entirely sure what you're after but this will match the first 2 only:

>[^>]*\w[^>]*(<a [^<]*<\/a>)

This matches any anchor tag that is preceded by a space that is preceded by some literal text. Please clarify the question with some more examples if this isn't the intended result.

edit: removed redundant \s before group edit: changed .* to [^>] to not skip tags

edited Feb 14 '16 at 00:32

answered Feb 12 '16 at 07:39

Ed'

397
2
7

I tried your suggestion, but it wont work if there is no space just before " some text – maX Feb 12 '16 at 12:55
Try that, I've removed the space and changed it to not skip over tags e.g. `
abc
and here
` – Ed' Feb 14 '16 at 00:35

regex - alphanumeric with space, but exclude only spaces without alphanumeric chars

1 Answers1