How to remove tags from a string in python using regular expressions? (NOT in HTML)

Question

I need to remove tags from a string in python.

<FNT name="Century Schoolbook" size="22">Title</FNT>

What is the most efficient way to remove the entire tag on both ends, leaving only "Title"? I've only seen ways to do this with HTML tags, and that hasn't worked for me in python. I'm using this particularly for ArcMap, a GIS program. It has it's own tags for its layout elements, and I just need to remove the tags for two specific title text elements. I believe regular expressions should work fine for this, but I'm open to any other suggestions.

Answer 1

This should work:

import re
re.sub('<[^>]*>', '', mystring)

To everyone saying that regexes are not the correct tool for the job:

The context of the problem is such that all the objections regarding regular/context-free languages are invalid. His language essentially consists of three entities: a = <, b = >, and c = [^><]+. He wants to remove any occurrences of acb. This fairly directly characterizes his problem as one involving a context-free grammar, and it is not much harder to characterize it as a regular one.

I know everyone likes the "you can't parse HTML with regular expressions" answer, but the OP doesn't want to parse it, he just wants to perform a simple transformation.

Answer 2

Please avoid using regex. Eventhough regex will work on your simple string, but you'd get problem in the future if you get a complex one.

You can use BeautifulSoup get_text() feature.

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

text = '<FNT name="Century Schoolbook" size="22">Title</FNT>'
soup = BeautifulSoup(text)

print(soup.get_text())

Answer 3

Searching this regex and replacing it with an empty string should work.

/<[A-Za-z\/][^>]*>/

Example (from python shell):

>>> import re
>>> my_string = '<FNT name="Century Schoolbook" size="22">Title</FNT>'
>>> print re.sub('<[A-Za-z\/][^>]*>', '', my_string)
Title

Answer 4

If it's only for parsing and retrieving value, you might take a look at BeautifulStoneSoup.

Answer 5

If the source text is well-formed XML, you can use the stdlib module ElementTree:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
mystring = """<FNT name="Century Schoolbook" size="22">Title</FNT>"""
element = ET.XML(mystring)
print element.text  # 'Title'

If the source isn't well-formed, BeautifulSoup is a good suggestion. Using regular expressions to parse tags is not a good idea, as several posters have pointed out.

Answer 6

Use an XML parser, such as ElementTree. Regular expressions are not the right tool for this job.