JavaScript lazy regex for matching HTML tags

Question

I'm having a problem writing a regular expression for matching HTML tags. I found a similar entry here, but this didn't quite work in my case.

Here's my test string:

<div id="div0" class="myclass">here's some text
that may include whitespace</div><div id="div1" class="myclass">
and some more here
</div>

And here's my regex based on the aforementioned entry:

<div[^>]*class="myclass">[^~]*?<\/div>

Note that I need to match the first instance of <div /> with class of "myclass." The content may have carriage returns. These <div> tags won't be nested.

Here's a rubular page for testing: http://rubular.com/r/vlfcikKMXk

Just thought you should know, with normal regex that *? would be helping, apparently in Ruby, it doesn't do anything. — Kerry Jones
– Kerry Jones, Commented Jun 17, 2010 at 5:46
So you already found a similar question (there are tons of them). The first answer was to use a real HTML parser, and yet you want to continue to use regular expressions for this? :) — Lukáš Lalinský
– Lukáš Lalinský, Commented Jun 17, 2010 at 5:47
@Kerry: You're right. Thanks for pointing me to the right direction. @Lukáš Lalinský: Yes.. I have a reason not to use a parser in this case. Thanks for your 2c still. — Grnbeagle
– Grnbeagle, Commented Jun 17, 2010 at 6:03

Kerry Jones · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-17 05:50:17Z

1

That regex tested is not great. It is in fact matching as you want it to, but it is matching it multiple times (2 different matches), and not showing a difference, you only want the first match.

Go here: http://gskinner.com/RegExr/

Test it there, turn off the 'global' you will see it working.

answered Jun 17, 2010 at 5:50

Kerry Jones

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