Regular Expression to extract inner text from anchor tags

Regular expression to extract inner text from anchor tags or hyperlinks

Several days ago, someone at the forum has asked how to extract the text from a hyperlink and preserve other HTML tags. It sound interesting, I did some research but can't find the direct solution. So, I decide to put together a simple regular expression to execute the task.

Regular Expression: (<[a|A][^>]*>|</[a|A]>)

Explanation:

<[a|A][^>]*> -- Remove <a href="a.aspx">
</[a|A]> -- Remove </a> tag

Example 1:

string str1 = "<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596528124/\" class=\"someclass\">Mastering Regular Expressions</a>
-- <A href=\"http://cnn.com/\">CNN</a> <div><a href=\"http://blog.ysatech.com\">http://blog.ysatech.com<;/a></div>";

str1 = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(str1, "(<[a|A][^>]*>|)", "");

Result: Mastering Regular Expressions -- CNN <div> http://blog.ysatech.com </div>

Example 2:

string str2 = "<div><a href=\"http://www.ysatech.com/\" class=\"someclass\">ysatech</a></div>";
 
str2 = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(str2, "(<[a|A][^>]*>|)", "");

Result: <div>ysatech</div>

Test this regular expression here.