Pattern matcher for a string containing html

[sarad saradh]

I have a string text which is nothing but html codes. I need to search words in the string and highlight them before rendering as a html page. I have the following code .

Pattern p = Pattern.compile(keyword, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher m = p.matcher(text);
while (m.find()) {
String beforeReplacement = m.group();
m.appendReplacement(sb, "<b><span style='background-color:yellow'>" + beforeReplacement + "</span></b>");
}
m.appendTail(sb);

It was working fine until recently I found a bug . The thing is if the word to be search (say class) is a part of html tag as well (for e.g. <x class="abc"> here is the class </x>), then both the tag and text gets highlighted.

How can I make pattern match ignoring the words inside html element tags?
I think it is using proper regex . But I am not able to come up with one ...
Any help...


sarad

[Henry Wong]

One option is to use a look ahead and/or look behind to either clarify what you want or eliminate what you don't want. Unfortunately, this won't work for all cases -- for example what if there are quoted values in tags? HTML is simply too complex for a regex to get it perfect, you will need some sort of HTML parser to get it perfect.

Henry

[sarad saradh]

@Henry ... thanks for you input ... let me see if I can satisfy the requirement with look behind...