Regex for tag with style attribute

Question

How could I match a text between a span opening and closing tags with style attribute?:

<span style="white-space: pre-line">some text</span>

I tried the following pattern but it doesn't work:

<span style=\"white-space: pre-line\">(.*)</span>

Are you asking us for a regex? If so then lookup the look behind and lookahead assertations — Toxicable, Jun 08 '16 at 07:34
Actually I understand that it's a bad idea to search html with a regex. Now I'm looking how to convert html text to a plain one. — user2598794, Jun 08 '16 at 09:18
I would suggest suing the nuget package: HTML Agility Pack https://www.nuget.org/packages/HtmlAgilityPack. It makes HTML traversal very easy — Toxicable, Jun 08 '16 at 09:20

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

2

First of all, it is in general a bad idea to parse HTML with a Regex.

It would be better to use a solution to parse HTML, like HTML Agility Pack.

That said, if you need help with Regular Expressions, you can download a tool that will help you analyze and test them. There are several tools available for that, I personally like Expresso.

In this particular case, I think you are having problems with the spaces, but I cannot be sure since you are not showing the RegexOptions you are using to build your Regex. Try

<span\s*style=\"white-space:\s*pre-line\">(.*)</span>

edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

Community

1
1

answered Jun 08 '16 at 07:41

Paolo Tedesco

55,237
33
144
193

@MaximilianAst: why should it be necessary to escape the `/`? – Paolo Tedesco Jun 08 '16 at 12:21
Sry my bad. Forgot that `/` hasn't to be escaped in .NET – Maximilian Ast Jun 08 '16 at 12:25

Regex for tag with style attribute

1 Answers1