looking for a single regexp to do 
s/(\s+)/\ /g

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UNLESS $1 is inside an HTML tag <(.*)$1(.*)> in other words, I want to substitute all white space outside of HTML tags in a (single line) string

so far it's making my brain hurt

In reply to looking for a regexp by dan2bit

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
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