Advanced Search - Matching html Tags

It is not difficult to find html tags and to find start tags with their matching end tags.

This could be useful for checking your html. It uses grouping with a back reference.

Find html start tags:

Search

"<"{AD}+ * ">"

This searches for "<" followed by one or more Alpha numeric characters. So this won't include the space after the tag name.

We can put two markers (@1 and @2) in there to pick out the tag name itself:

Search

"<"@1{AD}+@2 * ">"

And then we use those markers as a "back reference" to search for the matching end tag:

Search

"<"@1{AD}+@2 * ">" * ("</" @12">")

This adds some to the second example - search forward in line for "</" @12">" - these are within brackets to group them - so will only match </ followed by the tag name.

We only used a single * to search forward in the line so his will only find tags that start and end on a single line. Use ** to search for tags like <div> which span several lines.

Of course you can seach for specific tags. Just replace the {AD}+ with, for instance "table" (with the parentheses) to find tables.

Search

"<"@1"table"@2 * ">" ** ("</" @12">")