How do I "subtract" tables from some HTML?

dr4296

Greetings All!

I have a large chunk of HTML that I need to work with, but I need to REMOVE all tables and their contents from within it first.

How should I do this?

I'd been doing the opposite earlier (working with just the table contents) using a preg_match statement. But now I'm not quite sure how to do the reverse.

Thanks!

-= Dave =-

Weedpacket

:eek: - because tables can be nested to an arbitrary depth, that is something that just can't be done in a single regexp. (Okay, I know: with backreferences the things aren't pure regular expressions anyway, but I don't think they'll save us here because they can't count.)

A loop is needed.

while(preg_match(/*regexp to find a table*/,$html)){
$html=preg_replace(/*regexp to find an unnested table*/,'',$html);
}

My first attempt at the second regexp would be

'#<table((?🙁?!<table).)*)</table>#is'

but I have this weird urge to suggest

'#<table[^{<](?🙁?!</?table)<[^<])*</table>#is'}

as being faster (assuming it even works! 😉)

dr4296

I think I figured it out, thanks!!

It turns out, I really didn't need anything before the first instance of a table, so I just altered my preg_match statement to look for everything between the </table> and the <table> tags.

This excludes stuff before the first table and after the last one, but what I really wanted was the in-between stuff anyways, so this worked just fine.

Thanks!

-= Dave =-