how to match html tag

Question

I have to parse string like this:

foo <img ... > <strong>foo</strong> bar

and i need to replace img tag with an empty string

foo <strong>foo</strong> bar

I've tried with

<img.*>

but the result is

foo bar

How can i do?

PS: the html string is malformed

if you add a `?` after `.*` then it becomes a lazy match. For example a greedy match like `<.*>` would get "" from the string "". But `<.*?>` would only get "". — LukStorms, Sep 30 '16 at 10:14
Possible duplicate of [RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags) — Jatin, Sep 30 '16 at 10:36

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

To match the tast of SO this answer will have three parts * Answer to your problem * Official rant * Cleaner soulution

Answer to the problem

* is greedy so it will match to much. Two solutions are possible:

1.) *? non greedy match all 2.) <[^>]+> all within brackets

Never parse HTML using regex. There are many subtele errors you can run into. There is also this post on this: RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags