Regex to find special pattern in anchor tag

Question

i need to make a regex which can match anchor tags having href attribute. It should match any anchor tag having href attribute regardless of having any other attribute or not. So far i came up with this

<\s*a\s*\w*\W*\w*\W*\s*href[^>]*>

but its not working on cases like
<a name="anything" id="anything" href="anything"/>

If this is but a one-use dirty script, you shouldn't parse (x)html with regex but rather with an html or xml parser. — Aaron, Nov 26 '15 at 10:28
Stop trying to parse html with regex. Use a html parser instead — PeeHaa, Nov 26 '15 at 10:30
In addition to others' comments - what if your tag is on multiple lines. — lorenzog, Nov 26 '15 at 10:38
Always good to remember : [don't parse HTML with regex](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454) — Yaron Schwimmer, Nov 26 '15 at 10:46

Mayur Koshti · Answer 1 · 2015-11-26T10:51:47.540

-2

Try this one:

<a\s+[^>]*\bhref\b=\"[^\"]+\"[^>]*>

edited Nov 26 '15 at 10:51

answered Nov 26 '15 at 10:42

Mayur Koshti

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It's validating `` wich isn't a valid href attribute. Add a check for a whitespace before the `href` – naurel Nov 26 '15 at 10:45
And it doesn't validate this case : `` – naurel Nov 26 '15 at 10:50
Don't realy know since it's not my question – naurel Nov 26 '15 at 11:43
Will not match `< a...`. – Nov 26 '15 at 11:50
No it is not OK. Stop trying to come up with [a broken solution](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33936144/regex-to-find-special-pattern-in-anchor-tag#comment55632138_33936144). There are (subtle) ways this will break. Just stop. – PeeHaa Nov 26 '15 at 11:50

Regex to find special pattern in anchor tag

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