Problem with matching data outside html tags

Question

I am trying to come up with a way to match content that does not exist inside any xml or html tags. I've read that using regular expressions is fundamentally bad for parsing xml/html, and I'm open for any solution that will solve my problem, but if a regex works too all the better.

Here's an example of what I'm looking for:

the lazy fox jumped <span>over</span> the brown fence.

What I want back is

the lazy fox jumped  the brown fence

Any ideas?

Answer 1

It's probably a naive technique, but my first instinct would be to run the regular expression, figure out what text it matches within your parent string, and REMOVE it from that string, returning the remainder. In pseudocode,

String input = "whatever";
matches = Regex.Matches(input,"<.*>.*?</.*>");
foreach (match m in Matches)
{
input = input.Remove(m.Value);
}

Answer 2

Run this one over the string:

s/\(.*\)<.*>.*<.*>\(.*\)/\1\2/

You might need to change some of the details based on implementation (escaping parentheses may not be required, for example), but that'll get exactly what you want (with the double space and everything in the middle).