Member Avatar for boiishuvo

I want this program to read a text file then target and replace anything start with < and end with >
for example it finds <html>, replace that into ****
but somehow i tested it and it didn't work than i expected. any suggestions?

def remove_html(text):
    txtLIST = list(text)
    i = 0
    while i < len(txtLIST):
        if txtLIST[i] == '<':
            while txtLIST[i] != '>':
                txtLIST.pop(i)
            txtLIST.pop(i)
        else:
            i = i + 1
    replace = 4*'*'
    return replace.join(txtLIST)

file = open('remHTML.txt','r')
test = file
display = remove_html(test)
print display
  • 4 Contributors
  • 10 Replies
  • 492 Views
  • 11 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by boiishuvo

Dani AI

Generated

A few quick fixes and a more robust approach.

Your original errors were the usual ones: treating the open file object like a string, comparing single characters to the literal &lt;/&gt; escape sequences (those are the forum's HTML-escaped view; real files usually contain < and >), and not returning a value — already flagged that. correctly suggested a parser (BeautifulSoup is handy for big jobs) and showed a regex example; a parser avoids regex pitfalls (attributes with > inside quotes, multiline tags, etc.).

This minimal, practical solution uses Python’s built-in HTML parser to collect visible text, decodes HTML entities, and normalizes whitespace. It reads the file with read() and returns a plain string:

try:
    from html.parser import HTMLParser
    from html import unescape
except ImportError:
    from HTMLParser import HTMLParser
    import HTMLParser as _hp
    def unescape(s):
        return _hp.HTMLParser().unescape(s)

class TextExtractor(HTMLParser):
    def __init__(self):
        HTMLParser.__init__(self)
        self.parts = []
    def handle_data(self, data):
        self.parts.append(data)
    def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
        if tag in ('p','br','div','tr','li'):
            self.parts.append('\n')
    def handle_endtag(self, tag):
        if tag in ('p','br','div','tr','li'):
            self.parts.append('\n')
    def get_text(self):
        return ''.join(self.parts)

def remove_html(text):
    ext = TextExtractor()
    ext.feed(text)
    return ' '.join(unescape(ext.get_text()).split())

with open('remHTML.txt','r') as f:
    html = f.read()
print(remove_html(html))

Troubleshooting tips: run with print(repr(remove_html(html))) to inspect invisible whitespace, and if you only have small, well-formed snippets a simple non-greedy regex can work — but prefer the parser for real HTML. If you need to preserve some tags (like keeping line breaks), extend handle_starttag/handle_endtag as shown.

Recommended Answers

All 10 Replies

Member Avatar for nosehat

Lines 11 and 12 put "****" between every single character. Other than this, is the output what you expect?

By the way, you may want to look at the BeautifulSoup Python library for working with html files (and extracting text from them).

Member Avatar for snippsat

By the way, you may want to look at the BeautifulSoup Python library for working with html files (and extracting text from them).

I agree with this,but now it look like boiishuvo will destroy the stucture of html.
Should it replace like this or keep <> intact?

>>> s = '<html>'
>>> s.replace('<html>', '***')
'***'

Something like this with regex.

import re

html = '''\
<html>
<head>
    <title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>'''

print re.sub(r'<.*>', '****', html)
"""Output-->
****
****
    ****
****
****

****
****
"""
Member Avatar for boiishuvo

Wait I read the guide, they expect me to write a code that removes all HTML markup, including < and >, from a text file then display the rest of HTML left.

I've never heard of BeautifulSoup Python module but the guide don't expect me to use that though.

For example, a text file that shows: <title>Lachlan Osborn</title>
and the output should be like that: Lachlan Osborn

Member Avatar for snippsat

For example, a text file that shows: <title>Lachlan Osborn</title>
and the output should be like that: Lachlan Osborn

It can dependent how that text file look.
Can cange regex to something like this.

import re

data = '''\
<title>Lachlan Osborn</title>
<head>hello world</head>
'''

text = re.sub(r'<.*?>', '', data)
print text.strip()
"""Output-->
Lachlan Osborn
hello world
"""
Member Avatar for boiishuvo

Thanks. That's a good example but I modified the code to meet the guide requirement and the output didn't show anything.

def remove_html(text):
    import re
    info = open('remHTML.txt','r')
    data = info
    info.close()
    text = re.sub(r'<.*?>', '', data)

text = []
text_list = remove_html(text)
print(text_list.strip())
Member Avatar for TrustyTony

you are not returning anything.

Member Avatar for boiishuvo

Yeah I forgot to add that

but the line 8-10 seems incorrect.

Member Avatar for TrustyTony

You are modifying the passed in list text aren't you? I do not understand why you try to set other variable text_list.

Member Avatar for boiishuvo

how do I run the procedure

def remove_html(text)
Member Avatar for boiishuvo 
info = '''<table>
    <tr align = "center">
        <h1> Lachlan Osborn </h1>
        <p> Address: 5 Smith Street, Manly <br>
        Date of Birth: 26th April 1993 </p>
        
        <a href="semester.html"><b>My Semester Units</b></a>
        <p><b>Check out my <a href="hobbies.html">hobbies.</a></b></p>
    </tr>
</center>'''

def remove_html(text, info):
    import re
    text = re.sub(r'<.*?>', '', info)
    return text

remove_html(text.strip())
Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.