close end tag

gem555 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a code below.

#!/usr/bin/perl
while(<DATA>){
s/<a\s\w*>\w*</<\/a>/;
print $_;

}

__DATA__
<a href="www.google.txt>Click here<span>
[download]

How to close the tag if ending tag doesnot exists before any start of another '<'.

<a href="www.google.txt>Click here<span>
[download]

Comment on close end tag Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: close end tag by jbt (Chaplain) on Aug 21, 2009 at 10:47 UTC
I am not sure what you are ultimately trying to accomplish but you may want to consider a module like HTML::Scrubber to clean up your HTML.	[reply]
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Re: close end tag by Utilitarian (Vicar) on Aug 21, 2009 at 11:01 UTC
Hi gem, If you want to use the pattern above you need to correct your regular expression. you are matching: `<a # begin anchor tag \s # followed by a space \w* # followed by any number of alpha-numeric characters # this fails to match ["'=/:%?&] and probably many other potential + permissable chars in this context and so your regex fails here. > # end anchor tag \w* # any text as long as it's all one word see above point you should + be matching any char which is not the beginning of a tag < # beginning of a new tag including an end of anchor` [download] You are replacing your match with just an end of anchor tag, you need to capture what you match (possibly two distinct matches or a lookahead to check for end of anchor) and insert the end of anchor there. You have the basis of a tolerable regex but it needs finishing. Try and implement the above and let us know how you get on	[reply] [d/l]
Re: close end tag by Anonymous Monk on Aug 21, 2009 at 11:23 UTC
`#!/usr/bin/perl -- use strict; use warnings; use YAPE::HTML 1.11; while(<DATA>){ # adds missing closing tags print YAPE::HTML->new($_)->display,"\n"; } __DATA__ <a href="www.google.txt>Click here<span>` [download] Outputs `<a href="www.google.tx">Click here<span> </span></a>` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: close end tag by Anonymous Monk on Aug 21, 2009 at 10:49 UTC
if( closing tag is mising ){ print closingtag } so i think `print '</a>' if -1 == index lc $_, '</a>';` [download]	[reply] [d/l]