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):

1. 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.

2. Then I place a \\w*\\W* because I expect 1 or more of both alphanumeric and non alphanumeric characters to follow.

3. 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>

Answer 1

1. 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 .
2. \\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);