You can't parse [X]HTML with regex (2009)

Re:You can't parse [X]HTML with regex (2009) by kemitche on Friday March 05, 2021 @12:29PM (#26359415)

The problem is, the answers are useful to more than just the original questioner. Sure, the questioner may be doing things vastly wrong - but the people who land on that question's page via search may have legitimate reasons for doing things a certain way.

The silent majority of viewers will benefit from an answer that does both of (1) explaining why the answer is probably not what is wanted, and (2) answering the initial question _as written_ anyway, for future viewers.

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Re:You can't parse [X]HTML with regex (2009) by ivanbakel on Friday March 05, 2021 @01:05PM (#26359871)

Then those other viewers will either benefit in the same way from the frame challenge as a learning experience, or they will have a sufficiently-specific problem that they can ask their own questions with more justification for taking a specific approach.

Answering the question as written has the risk that any solution will be blindly applied without appreciating why the approach itself should be avoided. This is especially true for those users who see SO as a "write my code" site, and copy-paste anything in backticks.

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