How do I remove HTML from a string?

The most correct way (albeit not the fastest) is to use HTML::Parser from CPAN. Another mostly correct way is to use HTML::FormatText which not only removes HTML but also attempts to do a little simple formatting of the resulting plain text.

Many folks attempt a simple-minded regular expression approach, like s/<.*?>//g, but that fails in many cases because the tags may continue over line breaks, they may contain quoted angle-brackets, or HTML comment may be present. Plus, folks forget to convert entities--like &lt; for example.

Here's one "simple-minded" approach, that works for most files: 

    #!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
    s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\1)*>//gs
If you want a more complete solution, see the 3-stage striphtml program in http://www.cpan.org/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/striphtml.gz .

Here are some tricky cases that you should think about when picking a solution: 

    <IMG SRC = "foo.gif" ALT = "A > B">
    <IMG SRC = "foo.gif"
	 ALT = "A > B">
    <!-- <A comment> -->
    <script>if (a<b && a>c)</script>
    <# Just data #>
    <![INCLUDE CDATA [ >>>>>>>>>>>> ]]>
If HTML comments include other tags, those solutions would also break on text like this: 

    <!-- This section commented out.
        <B>You can't see me!</B>
    -->
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