Stripping quotes and apostrophes from HTML text

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Need to find all ’ and " in a string, and replace them with ’ and "

…but ONLY if they’re not part of an HTML tag! (because that would screw up the HTML big-time :frowning: ).

Tried this with java regexp, but seems I broke the regexp engine (at least, as far as I can understand the cryptic error msg - it seems to be saying “the point of what you’re trying to achieve here … is something I’m programmed not to even attempt”)

“Exception: Look-behind group does not have an obvious maximum length near index 13 (?i)(?])’(?![^>]>) ^”

on regexp: “(?i)(?<!<[^>])’(?![^>]>)”

Is there another way of achieving this? The HTML will probably be poorly formed, so XML isn’t an option really.

#2

could you not just loop thru the string(buffer?) considering each char at a time, if its one of those chars then u remove it and replace it with the other thing. you have a flag you set when you are inside a html tag and unset when you leave it so you know not to delete them inside the tags.?

I probably didnt read the post properly, it probably really isnt this simple. XD. but i had to put this just in cas eit is. :slight_smile:

#3

whilst that would work, technically speaking, it’s pretty horrendous if I have to create such a hacked-up piece of code just to do a simple search/replace op :(.

Surely there’s a better way?

#4

What about
“>[^<]*’”
doesn’t this regex do the job already?

#5

That would remove EVERYTHING between the end of the tag (including the close-tag symbol!) and the apostrophe itself :).

#6

actually I thought you could use it to find the positions of the “’” and this it should do fine. A “>” as the Tag-closer then some not “<” normal characters and it should stop at a “’”. mmh… “’” is also included in “[^<]” so this might be better:
“>[^<’]*’”
When you’ve found the position you can replace it and start searching for the next one.