remove html tags from a string using RE2 regex library

Question

I need to remove HTML tags from a string:

std::String whole_file("<imgxyz width=139\nheight=82 id=\"_x0000_i1034\" \n src=\"cid:image001.jpg@01CB8C98.EA83E0A0\" \nalign=baseline border=0> \ndfdsf");

When I use RE2 library for pattern remove

RE2::GlobalReplace(&whole_file,"<.*?>"," ");

The Html Tags are not removed, when i use

RE2::GlobalReplace(&whole_file,"<.*\n.*\n.*?>"," ");

The html tags are removed, why is it so .. can any one suggest a better regular expression to remove HTML tags from a file?

Answer 1

Wild guess: . does not match the EOL character.

You could use: "<[.\\n]*?>" to match any number of newline character.

Answer 2

Check pattern: <[^>]*>

Sample code:

#include <string.h>
#include <string>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <vector>
#include <regex>

int main()
{
    //Find all html codes
    std::regex htmlCodes("<[^>]*>");
    std::cmatch matches;
    const char* nativeString = "asas<td cl<asas> ass=\"played\">0</td><td class=\"played\">";

    int offset = 0;
    while(std::regex_search ( nativeString + offset, matches, htmlCodes ))
    {
        if(matches.size() < 1)
        {
            break;
        }

        for (unsigned i=0; i<matches.size(); ++i)
        {
            const int position = matches.position(i) + offset;
            printf("Found: %s %d %ld\n",matches[i].str().c_str(),position,matches.length(i));
            offset = position +  matches.length(i);
        }
    }
    return 0;
}

Output:

Found: <td cl<asas> 4 12
Found: </td> 31 5
Found: <td class="played"> 36 19