Emacs regexp-replace seems to work unexpectedly

Question

I am trying to remove some <span style="something not constant"> from a text and I tried M-x replace-regexp> "<span*>" -> ""

but it does nothing. I made sure the cursor is at the beginning of the file.

Answer 1

You must probably know that * in a regex means 'repetition', and i'm not sure you want to remove something like <spannnnn>, do you ?

What you mean is probably: <span.*>

PS: Made the same mistake as you ;)