Please Help: Regular Expression Gives Stack Overflow

Question

Regular Expressions are the bane of my existence. I hate them and everyone seem to have their own slightly different syntax. Anyhow, I have a problem with the below code, as it gives me a stack overflow:
     public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
          System.out.print(parseText(readTextFile("c:\\file.txt"))); // the input file is displayed below
// simple method to test that the regular expression can be matched. it works for simple expression, but not the one below
// this is the code that causes stack overflow
     public static String parseText(String inputString) {
           Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<tr>(\\s)*<td class = 'abc[0-9]*(\\s)*'>(.|\\s)+</nobr>(\\s)+</td>(\\s)+</tr>");
           Matcher m = p.matcher(inputString);
           m.find();
           return m.group();
// this method just reads in a text file and returns a String with the whole content
// this works, but is posted here for completeness
    public static String readTextFile(String filePath)
        File file = new File(filePath);
          StringBuffer contents = new StringBuffer();
          BufferedReader reader = null;
          try {
               reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
               String text = null;
               // repeat until all lines is read
               while ((text = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                    contents.append(text).append(
                              System.getProperty("line.separator"));
          } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
          } catch (IOException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
          } finally {
               try {
                    if (reader != null) {
                         reader.close();
               } catch (IOException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
          return contents.toString();
    }Below is the content of what I'm feeding the above code as file.txt that results in an error.
   <tr>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            <b><a href = 'http://somedomain.com/bla.html' class="a1"> 
                something 1
            </a></b>   
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            cars 
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 ' nowrap align="center">
            ibm
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            <a href = 'http://somedomain.com/bla2.html'>
                Features
            </a>
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            <nobr>Feb 5, 2009</nobr>
        </td>
    </tr>
   <tr>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            <b><a href = 'http://somedomain.com/bla2.html' class="b1"> 
                something 2
            </a></b>   
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            car 
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 ' nowrap align="center">
            sun
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            <a href = 'http://somedomain.com/bla3.html'>
                Features
            </a>
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            <nobr>Feb 5, 2009</nobr>
        </td>
    </tr>
    Here is some lines from the stack overflow output:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StackOverflowError
     at java.util.regex.Pattern$GroupTail.match(Unknown Source)
     at java.util.regex.Pattern$BranchConn.match(Unknown Source)
     at java.util.regex.Pattern$CharProperty.match(Unknown Source)
     at java.util.regex.Pattern$Branch.match(Unknown Source)
     at java.util.regex.Pattern$GroupHead.match(Unknown Source)However, if I feed the program this shorter version of the input it works (it matches only once and is just the top portion of the original file.txt):
   <tr>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            <b><a href = 'http://somedomain.com/bla.html' class="a1"> 
                something 1
            </a></b>   
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            cars 
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 ' nowrap align="center">
            ibm
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            <a href = 'http://somedomain.com/bla2.html'>
                Features
            </a>
        </td>
        <td class = 'abc1 '>
            <nobr>Feb 5, 2009</nobr>
        </td>
    </tr>I did some google searches, but the problem appears to do with how I crafted my regular expression. The solution didn't make sense to me.... Anyone help me please as I spent a big portion of the day already!

Answer 1

@flounder,
Wow, hold your horses...
That comment was meant to denote my level of frustration with this since I had spent a large portion of the day trying to figure it out. It was not intended to designate my issue or time as more important than others.
I certainly appreciate any help considering nobody is being compensated in any way for helping me.
@jschell,
This is intended to be used as a one time deal to automate recapturing data we no longer have in a non-HTML format.
I appreciate the suggestion though.
@JoachimSauer
Thank you for all your help. I appreciate it!