Strip HTML by regexp?

Question

Hi,
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In short: what's the regexp for stripping HTML tags?
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I want to give users the option of some basic formatting when entering note fields. Most of the time a plain Text Area will suit their purposes, and displaying a Text Area with HTML Editor will just scare them.
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(Sadly Text Area with HTML Editor items are not configurable - I really want to be able to switch off options like Justification, Foreground and Background. It's very irritating to be typing this post into the sort of item I want to provide!)
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My prototype solution is a radio button which allows users to toggle between a plain Text Area and one with an Editor, preserving any text so far entered. Fine, I've got that far.
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When the user switches from plain text to Editor, I just replace chr(10) with '<br>' and all is well.
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When the user switches from Editor to plain text, I need to strip the HTML tags out.
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I've googled far and wide for a regular expression to do it, but all the solutions I've found are in VB, Perl, Python or whatever.
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Clearly the HTMLDB team have cracked it - I imagine that the Strip HTML option on reports is a regexp_replace - so would anyone please care to share?
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Many thanks,
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John D
PS the commonly-cited expression '<(.|\n)*?>' doesn't work:
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SQL> select regexp_replace('&lt;p>abc&lt;/p>','<(.|\n)*?>',null) str from dual;
S
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PPS when I previewed this post, my linebreaks were lost, so I had to put them in manually.Odd.

Answer 1

SQL> select regexp_replace('&lt;p&gt;abc&lt;/p&gt;','&lt;[^>]*&gt;',null) str from dual;
STR
abcseems to work for simple markup