You've told it to match one character not an > (which 1 is), one or more digits (which 3 is), zero or more lower case letters (which nothing is), and one character that's not < (which a is). Wherein lies the problem?

And of course there's the standard jibe that in general you want to use something like HTML::TreeBuilder or the like to parse HTML, not regexen.

Update: Curse you, Red Baronmerlyn. :)

And a hopefully useful pointer: YAPE::Regex::Explain can be helpful for obtaining a prose explanation of just what your regex means. Using it on your regex produces this: 

perl -MYAPE::Regex::Explain -le 'print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new( qr/(
+[^>]\d+[a-z]*[^<])/ )->explain'
The regular expression:

(?-imsx:([^>]\d+[a-z]*[^<]))

matches as follows:
  
NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  (                        group and capture to \1:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    [^>]                     any character except: '>'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    \d+                      digits (0-9) (1 or more times (matching
                             the most amount possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    [a-z]*                   any character of: 'a' to 'z' (0 or more
                             times (matching the most amount
                             possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    [^<]                     any character except: '<'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  )                        end of \1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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In reply to Re: Angle brackets and regex problem by Fletch
in thread Angle brackets and regex problem by emav

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