# Removing extranious html

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-extranious-html/176916>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 8, 2009, 5:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-extranious-html/176916 "2009-10-08T05:41:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![morgan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/0ea827/32.png) [@morgan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/morgan)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2009, 5:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-extranious-html/176916/1 "2009-10-08T05:41:19Z")

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I can’t seem to find a way to do this… i have a bunch of html files  
that i just need to remove from the \<!DOCTYPE to the tag on the  
top then i need to remove from to on the bottom.

i looked at gsub and i’m learning regular expressions but i can’t seem  
to figure out how they work. so far i’ve been able to figure out how to  
kill single words and single letters but not whole blocks of letters and  
words.

it’s mildly frustrating.

well if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated. i’m off to my  
regex book.

thanks in advanced.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![morgan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/0ea827/32.png) [@morgan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/morgan)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2009, 5:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-extranious-html/176916/2 "2009-10-08T05:52:12Z")

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Morgan M. wrote:

> I can’t seem to find a way to do this… i have a bunch of html files  
> that i just need to remove from the \<!DOCTYPE to the tag on the  
> top then i need to remove from to on the bottom.
> 
> i looked at gsub and i’m learning regular expressions but i can’t seem  
> to figure out how they work. so far i’ve been able to figure out how to  
> kill single words and single letters but not whole blocks of letters and  
> words.
> 
> it’s mildly frustrating.
> 
> well if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated. i’m off to my  
> regex book.

Your regex book will be the best help, but here’s a clue: I think you’re  
going about it inside-out. It would probably easiest to extract the  
entire element. It’s relatively simple to write a regex that  
will cover most cases, but if you have to cover absolutely every valid  
case, you may want to use Nokogiri, Hpricot, or JavaScript DOM  
manipulation instead.

> thanks in advanced.

## Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser  
[http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org)  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![morgan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/0ea827/32.png) [@morgan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/morgan)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2009, 7:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/removing-extranious-html/176916/3 "2009-10-08T07:21:29Z")

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Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:

> Your regex book will be the best help, but here’s a clue: I think you’re  
> going about it inside-out. It would probably easiest to extract the  
> entire element. It’s relatively simple to write a regex that  
> will cover most cases, but if you have to cover absolutely every valid  
> case, you may want to use Nokogiri, Hpricot, or JavaScript DOM  
> manipulation instead.
> 
> > thanks in advanced.
> 
> ## Best,
> 
> Marnen Laibow-Koser  
> [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org)  
> removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

hrmm. i was using gsub to blank all the stuff i didn’t want… maybe i’ll  
just pull the stuff that i do. the marvels of reversing your logic.  
thanks.