RegExp to strip HTML comments

user_109652 0
Viewed 76182

Looking for a regexp sequence of matches and replaces (preferably PHP but doesn't matter) to change this (the start and end is just random text that needs to be preserved).

IN:

fkdshfks khh fdsfsk 
<!--g1-->
<div class='codetop'>CODE: AutoIt</div>
<div class='geshimain'>
    <!--eg1-->
    <div class="autoit" style="font-family:monospace;">
        <span class="kw3">msgbox</span>
    </div>
    <!--gc2-->
    <!--bXNnYm94-->
    <!--egc2-->
    <!--g2-->
</div>
<!--eg2-->
fdsfdskh

to this OUT:

fkdshfks khh fdsfsk 
<div class='codetop'>CODE: AutoIt</div>
<div class='geshimain'>
    <div class="autoit" style="font-family:monospace;">
        <span class="kw3">msgbox</span>
    </div>
</div>
fdsfdskh

Thanks.

html php regex
14 Answers

Are you just trying to remove the comments? How about

s/<!--[^>]*-->//g

or the slightly better (suggested by the questioner himself):

<!--(.*?)-->

But remember, HTML is not regular, so using regular expressions to parse it will lead you into a world of hurt when somebody throws bizarre edge cases at it.

Paul_Tomblin_33330

Ah I've done it,

<!--(.*?)-->
user_1096520

With next:

/( )*<!--((.*)|[^<]*|[^!]*|[^-]*|[^>]*)-->\n*/g

Can remove multiline comments using test string:

fkdshfks khh fdsfsk 
<!--g1-->
<div class='codetop'>CODE: AutoIt</div>
    <div class='geshimain'>
    <!--eg1-->
    <div class="autoit" style="font-family:monospace;">
        <span class="kw3">msgbox</span>
    </div>
    <!--gc2-->
    <!--bXNnYm94-->
    <!--egc2-->
    <!--g2-->
</div>
<!--eg2-->
fdsfdskh

<!-- --
> test
- -->

<!-- --
<- test <
>
- -->

<!--
test !<
- <!--
-->

<script type="text/javascript">//<![CDATA[
    var xxx = 'a';   
    //]]></script>

ok
user_25993180

I know that this is quite an old post, but I felt that it would be useful to add to this post in case anyone wants an easy to implement PHP function that directly answers the original question.

/**
 * Strip all the html comments from $text
 *
 * @param $text - text to modify
 * @param string $new replacement string
 * @return array|string|string[]|null
 */
function strip_html_comments($text, $new=''){
    $search = array ("|<!--[\s\S]*?-->|si");
    $replace = array ($new);
    return preg_replace($search, $replace, $text);
}
user_21705740

If you just want the text or text with specific tags you can handle this with PHP strip_tags it also delete HTML comment and you can save HTML tags you need like this:

$text = '<p>Test paragraph.</p><!-- Comment --> <a href="#fragment">Other text</a>';
echo strip_tags($text, ['p', 'a']);

the output will be:

<p>Test paragraph.</p> <a href="#fragment">Other text</a>

I hope it helps somebody!

user_120554640
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