php/regex - remove single tags

Question

I would like to export some single tags that doesn't make sense in my text (exported from MS Word), such as:

<b stuff /> and <i stuff />.

I've tried the following regex:

/<b(.*?)\/>/i

But it doesn't work when I have something like:

<i>My text</i> some other text<i class="stuff" /> my final text.

Instead of getting only the single tag, it gets everything. How could I fix this, please? The final result must be:

<i>My text</i> some other text my final text.

UPDATE: aelor's answer was the closest to the one I needed. In the end, I mixed both aelor and Mikhail's answer to get this:

/(\s?)<[ib][^>]+\/>(\s?)/

Thanks!

/<(b|i) (.*?)\/>/i matches both the b and the i. I'd add a space after to prevent removal of other tags. — pritaeas
– pritaeas, Commented Apr 15, 2014 at 7:16
.*? is lazy and will match as little as possible. It's also "match any character zero to infinity times" hence your regex matches include the first tag as well. .+? is lazy "1 to infinity" search. [^>]+ meaning "any character that isn't > matched 1 to infinity times" is much more useful and much better performance wise. — h2ooooooo
– h2ooooooo, Commented Apr 15, 2014 at 7:29

aelor · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-15 07:21:02Z

2

search <[^>]+\/>

and replace with nothing.

answered Apr 15, 2014 at 7:21

aelor

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