replace sub tag from html file by something else

Question

I have a string like below:

string = "<sub>1</sub>"

I wanna change the tag sub to something like this:

 "<sub>1</sub>" ->  "-sub--1--sub-"

I've tried this:

string1 = re.sub('<sub.*>','-sub--',string)
string1 = re.sub('</sub>','--sub-',string)

but it doesn't work.

Answer 1

re.sub(r"<([^>]*)>([^<]*)<\/([^>]*)>", r"-\1--\2--\3-", string)

Answer 2

You've used the greedy operator .*, where the non-greedy operator .*? would work better. Additionally, your second change overrides your first. Try this:

string1 = re.sub('<sub.*?>','-sub--',string)
string1 = re.sub('</sub>','--sub-',string1)

However, you should probably avoid using regex to parse XML. Use an XML parser instead.