Javascript Regular Expression for removing text

Question

I want to replace a string of characters in an html tag using JavaScript. So in this example I want to remove everything between the <table and <tbody>. I'm using the replace function and a regular expression. The regular expression construction must be wrong somewhere. Here is what I currently have:

str = str.replace(/([<table]\w*\W*[<tbody>])/, "");

The regular expression logic as I see it is like this (correct me where I'm wrong):

I'm looking for the string match of <table so I put that string in the brackets as I want that to match exactly as written.
Then I place a \w*\W* because I expect 1 or more of both alphanumeric and non alphanumeric characters to follow.
Finally I place the "< tbody>" in the brackets because I expect that format exactly.

So the results are not as I expected. There is no other <tbody> or <table in my string so I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

This is what the string looks like before I replace the characters with nothing.

"\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n                                                <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
<table id=\"gvStation_ctl19_gvExtRows\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse;\" border=\"1\" rules=\"all\" cellspacing=\"0\">
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<tbody>

What reference material are you using to learn/understand regular expression? (You have the wrong information) — Amit, Sep 29 '16 at 23:50
Characteres inside [] doesn't represent a word, it will match one of any characters inside it ex: `[ — Leonardo Xavier, Sep 29 '16 at 23:54
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/590747/using-regular-expressions-to-parse-html-why-not — epascarello, Sep 30 '16 at 00:19

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 22 '22 at 08:01

The brackets find any character between in any order so you don't need it in this case. See http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_obj_regexp.asp.
\w* and \W* don't match the whitespaces.

Here is the solution : /<\s*table(?:.|\s)*<\s*tbody\s*>/i

var str = '"\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n < div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t < table id=\"gvStation_ctl19_gvExtRows\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse;\" border=\"1\" rules=\"all\" cellspacing=\"0\"> \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t< tbody>';

str = str.replace(/<\s*table(?:.|\s)*<\s*tbody\s*>/i, "");

alert(str);

Javascript Regular Expression for removing text

1 Answers1