Optional word in regex

[Guest]

Hi,

I need some help in doing a regex find.  I want to find the content of a <td> tag.  However, the content might be enclosed by <span> tag. 

<td>abc</td>

<td><span>abc</span></td>

How do I write the regex that can capture abc in either situation? 

Thank you!

[Dan_Bracuk]

Write two, and use or logic.

[Guest]

Hi Dan,

Do you mean using two regex string like this:

regexStr1 = "<td><span>(.*?)</span></td>";

regexStr2 = "<td>(.*?)</td>";

And then run them using refindnocase()?

result1 = reFindNoCase( regexStr1, str, 1, "yes" );

result2 = reFindNoCase( regexStr2, str, 1, "yes" );

if( result1.pos[1] )

          targetStr = mid( str, result1.pos[ 2 ], result1.len[ 2 ] );

else if ( result2.pos[1]  )

          targetStr = mid( str, result2.pos[ 2 ], result2.len[ 2 ] );

else

          throw "Target string not found";

I also read that you can set an optional group in regex without triggering it as a back reference.  It works by enclosing the optional group with (?: and )?.  So I tried:

regexStr3 = "<td>(?:\<span\>)?(.*?)(?:\</span\>)?</td>"

When I tried this last week, I couldn't get it to work, but now it seems to work fine.  Not sure what I did wrong. 

Thanks!

ML