Java regex to strip out XML tags, but not tag contents

Question

I have the following Java code:

str = str.replaceAll(\"<.*?>.*?|<.*?/>\", \"\");

This turns a String like so:

Answer 1

While there are other correct answers, none give any explanation.

The reason your regex <.*?>.*?|<.*?/> doesn't work is because it will select any tags as well as everything inside them. You can see that in action on debuggex.

The reason your second attempt <.*?>|<.*?/> doesn't work is because it will select from the beginning of a tag up to the first close tag following a tag. That is kind of a mouthful, but you can understand better what's going on in this example.

The regex you need is much simpler: <.*?>. It simply selects every tag, ignoring if it's open/close. Visualization.