RegExp to remove code between triangle brackets <>

I want to remove text from a string contained within triangle brackets:

string1 = '<asdfasdf> text <asdf> <";>';
string2 = 'text';

I'm trying to use regexprep to remove the bracketed text, or regexp to extract non-bracketed text. Below code does not correctly identify all the bracketed strings.

string1 = '<asdfasdf> text <asdf> <";>';
exp = '^<.*>$';
ind = regexp(string1,exp);

[Stephen23]

a = '<asdfasdf> text <asdf> <";>';
x = regexp(a,'(?<=\s)\w+')

x = 12

Answer 1

[Les Beckham]

Try using non-greedy matching (with a question mark: ?). This works on your example (assuming you want to remove the brackets as well as the text between them):

string1 = '<asdfasdf> text <asdf> <";>';
exp = '<.*?>';
newstring = regexprep(string1, exp, '')

newstring = ' text  '

See documentation here

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

This question cannot be answered meaningfully unless we know the exact rules by which it is legal to have additional "<" and ">" characters within the string contained in triangle brackets.

For example,

string1 = '<asdf<sam>asdf> text <asdf> <";>';

string2 = '<asdf<asdf> text <asdf> <";>';

string3 = '<asdf>asdf> text <asdf> <";>';

string4 = '<asdf<sa<foo>m>asdf> text <asdf> <";>';

string5 = '<asdf<s<a<asdf> text <asdf> <";>';

string6 = '<asdf>s>a>asdf> text <asdf> <";>';

are all potentially valid "characters within the string contained in triangle brackets". Allowing nested <> complicates regexp parsing a lot, especially if there is no upper limit on the number of nesting levels permitted.