print start of html tags

Question

I want to print out the first html tags thats has attributes

    
test
    
test2
    
         


        
      

Answer 1

This seems pretty complicated, you can try with this expression, but it would fail in some cases. It would first collect the undesired instances, then at the end there is a capturing group for those desired.

Maybe, it wouldn't be the best idea to use regular expressions here.

Test

import re

regex = r"^\s*<\S+>\s*$|^\s*<\S+\s.*test.*?>.*?<\/\S+>$|^\s*(<.*>)\s*$"

test_str = """

test
    
test2
    

    
test3
    

    

    
test3

"""

print(re.findall(regex, test_str, re.M))

Output

['', '', '
', '', '', '
', '']

The expression is explained on the top right panel of regex101.com, if you wish to explore/simplify/modify it, and in this link, you can watch how it would match against some sample inputs, if you like.