Regex for removing tag in javascript

Question

I have this tag:

const tag = '<symbol xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 28.3 28.3" id="logo-square-empty"><path fill="none" d="M-.7-.9h30v30h-30z" /><path d="M0 28.3h28.3V0H0v28.3zM3.5 3.5h21.3v21.3H3.5V3.5z" /></symbol>'

I want to remove the <symbol> and </symbol> tags, and get this result:

<path fill="none" d="M-.7-.9h30v30h-30z" /><path d="M0 28.3h28.3V0H0v28.3zM3.5 3.5h21.3v21.3H3.5V3.5z" />

So I wrote this regex:

/</?symbol[^>]*>/;

Which can be tested here: https://regexr.com/42fan

And I should be able to do:

const regex = /</?symbol[^>]*>/;
const replacedString = tag.replace(regex, '');

But I get Parsing error: Unexpected token ^. How should I write it to avoid this parsing error?

[You should not try to parse HTML with a regex.](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/6320039) — Ulysse BN, Nov 04 '18 at 11:37

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 04 '18 at 11:44

1

Instead of parsing HTML we can manipulate with tag as HTML:

const tag = '<symbol xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 28.3 28.3" id="logo-square-empty"><path fill="none" d="M-.7-.9h30v30h-30z" /><path d="M0 28.3h28.3V0H0v28.3zM3.5 3.5h21.3v21.3H3.5V3.5z" /></symbol>'

var div = document.createElement('DIV')
div.innerHTML = tag
result = div.firstElementChild.innerHTML.toString()
console.log(result)

answered Nov 04 '18 at 11:44

qiAlex

4,290
2
19
35

You are assuming that you are in the client – Nov 04 '18 at 11:51

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 04 '18 at 11:39

You have not escaped the / in your regular expression. You won't have errors with this:

/<\/?symbol[^>]*>/

That said, it won't work for your task and is still a bad idea to parse your HTML with a regex. And you may prefer to work directly with your DOM, using a getElementByXXX javascript method.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 04 '18 at 11:45

0

Please try with the following regex :

const regex = /<\/?symbol[^>]*>/;
const replacedString = tag.replace(regex, '');

answered Nov 04 '18 at 11:45

vikas singhal

90
3

Regex for removing tag in javascript

3 Answers3