Remove empty tags

[username]

Hi all, am looking to remove tags which have no inner content i.e:

<a class="test"></a> - this would be removed
<a class="test">content</a> - this would not be removed

I have been playing with regular expressions attempting to do this with no luck thus far. Below is my effort:

$content = "<a></a><b>non-empty</b>";
$pattern = "/<[^\/>]*>([\s]?)*<\/[^>]*>/";
echo preg_replace($pattern, '', $content);

If anyone could assist, it would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[username]

So just an update. Does anyone have any ideas about my topic?

[coopster]

I think you are going to need to apply a lookahead or lookbehind assertion here. The PCRE Pattern Syntax [php.net] page explains the application.

[coopster]

Actually, upon afterthought, if you are looking for empty tags you may not need to use assertion. Build your pattern to look for an <a> element with no characters before it's end tag.

[coopster]

Something to get you started ...

$subject = '<a class="test"></a><p><- this would be removed</p> 
 <p></p> 
 <a class="test">content</a> 
'; 
$pattern = '/(<a[^>]*><\/a>)/i'; 
print htmlentities($subject). "<br />\n"; 
print htmlentities(preg_replace($pattern, '', $subject)); 
exit;

[username]

Thanks coopster. Got it working.