Stripping out html tags in string

Question

I have a program I'm writing that is supposed to strip html tags out of a string. I've been trying to replace all strings that start with "<" and end with ">". This (obviously because I'm here asking this) has not worked so far. Here's what I've tried:

StrippedContent = Regex.Replace(StrippedContent, "\<.*\>", "")

That just returns what seems like a random part of the original string. I've also tried

For Each StringMatch As Match In Regex.Matches(StrippedContent, "\<.*\>")
    StrippedContent = StrippedContent.Replace(StringMatch.Value, "")
Next

Which did the same thing (returns what seems like a random part of the original string). Is there a better way to do this? By better I mean a way that works.

Answer 1

Description

This expression will:

• find and replace all tags with nothing
• avoid problematic edge cases

Regex: <(?:[^>=]|='[^']*'|="[^"]*"|=[^'"][^\s>]*)*>

Replace with: nothing

Example

Sample Text

Note the difficult edge case in the mouse over function

these are <a onmouseover=' href="NotYourHref" ; if (6/a>3) { funRotator(href) } ; ' href=abc.aspx?filter=3&prefix=&num=11&suffix=>the droids</a> you are looking for.

Code

Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
Module Module1
  Sub Main()
    Dim sourcestring as String = "replace with your source string"
    Dim replacementstring as String = ""
    Dim matchpattern as String = "<(?:[^>=]|='[^']*'|=""[^""]*""|=[^'""][^\s>]*)*>"
    Console.Writeline(regex.Replace(sourcestring,matchpattern,replacementstring,RegexOptions.IgnoreCase OR RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace OR RegexOptions.Multiline OR RegexOptions.Singleline))
  End Sub
End Module

String after replacement

these are the droids you are looking for.