Comments Inside the Regex

The /x modifier causes whitespace to be ignored in a regex pattern (except in a character class), and also allows you to use normal comments there, too. As you can imagine, whitespace and comments help a lot.

/x lets you turn this:

    s{<(?:[^>'"]*|".*?"|'.*?')+>}{}gs;

    s{ <                    # opening angle bracket
        (?:                 # Non-backreffing grouping paren
             [^>'"] *       # 0 or more things that are neither > nor ' nor "
                |           #    or else
             ".*?"          # a section between double quotes (stingy match)
                |           #    or else
             '.*?'          # a section between single quotes (stingy match)
        ) +                 #   all occurring one or more times
       >                    # closing angle bracket
    }{}gsx;                 # replace with nothing, i.e. delete