CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexvbscriptnested
SSpoke
SSpoke

Reputation: 5836

Regular Expression matching nested TAGS

Hello I'm trying to match multi-nested quote's blockquotes and transform them back into BBCode This is what I got so far as far as regex is involved Converted it back to html entities to be seen on stackedoverflow

<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">([\s\S]*?)</div></div><blockquote>([\s\S]*?)(?:</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div>){2,})

I'm trying to match this

<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote</div></div><blockquote>Outside quote is this <div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote</div></div><blockquote>Inner quote is this</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div> </blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div>

to generate this

[quote]Outside quote is this[quote]Inner quote is this[/quote][/quote]

I'm using VBScript 5.5 Regeular Expressions for this. (but this isn't that important)

I really need help on the expression. I've tired using a HTML Parser for this but it turns out to be more difficult then using regex

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2260

Answers (2)

Jon Abaca
Jon Abaca

Reputation: 841

Well, this is all you need to do with the parser.

Here's the pseudocode. I don't know your parser so this is the best I can offer.

First find the div tag with the quoteheader class. Get the next sibling.

That is the blockquote tag. Let's call this tag theQuote.

Get the first child of theQuote. It will be a html text item. That is the outer quote.

Get the third child of theQuote. It will be another blockquote tag. Let's call this tag theInner.

Get the first child of theInner. It will be a html text item. That is the inner quote.

Upvotes: 0

Dylan Lacey
Dylan Lacey

Reputation: 1844

I'm just repeating what's said here.

Regular Expressions can't match Context Free languages, like groups of tags. You can't match opening to closing tags, so parsing a block (Especially a nested one) becomes impossible to do reliably.

You can certainly build a cludge to help, but there will be situations where it won't work.

Upvotes: 3

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