From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2012-06-13T18:35:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Remove HTML from String? --> a better method

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 4:39 AM, Daniel P. C. <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
> I hate regex.  I've written some ruby functions to remove html tags in
> blocks and not just special characters... also rules for swapping html
> code for anything else is included.  Example <br> will be swapped out
> for \n with existing rules.  My code is available at
> https://github.com/6ftDan/regex-is-evil

What a mess.  This is extremely inefficient.  You create new strings
all the time.  You go over the string multiple times.  You do not pass
start and end index down to strip_seq().  There is no test which
ensures start index is lower than end index (try with string ">foo<").

I'd prefer a regexp solution anytime.  It's likely faster and easier
to read - for me at least.  Btw. /x goes a long way at making a regexp
more readable - you can even include comments.  Just a simple example:
https://gist.github.com/2923072

But proper tool is of course a HTML parser like Nokogiri.

Kind regards

robert


-- 
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