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This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq9.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
reduce the number of repeated questions as well as allow the community
to review and update the answers. The latest version of the complete
perlfaq is at http://faq.perl.org .

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9.4: How do I remove HTML from a string?

The most correct way (albeit not the fastest) is to use "HTML:arser"
from CPAN. Another mostly correct way is to use "HTML::FormatText" which
not only removes HTML but also attempts to do a little simple formatting
of the resulting plain text.

Many folks attempt a simple-minded regular expression approach, like
"s/<.*?>//g", but that fails in many cases because the tags may continue
over line breaks, they may contain quoted angle-brackets, or HTML
comment may be present. Plus, folks forget to convert entities--like
"&lt;" for example.

Here's one "simple-minded" approach, that works for most files:

#!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\g1)*>//gs

If you want a more complete solution, see the 3-stage striphtml program
in http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Chri...s/striphtml.gz .

Here are some tricky cases that you should think about when picking a
solution:

<IMG SRC = "foo.gif" ALT = "A > B">

<IMG SRC = "foo.gif"
ALT = "A > B">

<!-- <A comment> -->

<script>if (a<b && a>c)</script>

<# Just data #>

<![INCLUDE CDATA [ >>>>>>>>>>>> ]]>

If HTML comments include other tags, those solutions would also break on
text like this:

<!-- This section commented out.
<B>You can't see me!</B>
-->



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