/prog/ - Parsing HTML with regex

Name: Jeff 2013-09-27 12:13

RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

I need to match all of these opening tags:



<p>

<a href="foo">

But not these:



<br />

<hr class="foo" />

I came up with this and wanted to make sure I've got it right. I am only capturing the a-z.
<([a-z]+) *[^/]*?>

I believe it says:
* Find a less-than, then
* Find (and capture) a-z one or more times, then
* Find zero or more spaces, then
* Find any character zero or more times, greedy, except /, then
* Find a greater-than

Do I have that right? And more importantly, what do you think?

Parsing HTML with regex

1 Name: Jeff 2013-09-27 12:13

31 Name: Anonymous 2013-09-29 4:14

Name: Jeff 2013-09-27 12:13

Name: Anonymous 2013-09-29 4:14