junk DNA validation

[roedygr]

I was shocked when I wrote this Funduc regex

\<span class=\"+[a-z]\"\>\</span\>

to look for junk of the form

<span class="xxx"></span>

there were pages of it.

It can always be safely removed.

Having whitespace inside may be intentional and meaningful.

[Albert Wiersch]

Thanks for the tip.

BTW, I think this regular expression search should be "\<span class=\".*\"\>\</span\>" (without the outside quotes).

I will look into adding a message about "span" elements that don't contain any text in a future version.

[Albert Wiersch]

The next update should display this warning message for empty "span" elements:
This "span" element is empty and may be useless. Consider removing this element or placing text (or something else) in it.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[MikeGale]

Where did the HTML come from that had this in it?

Do you know what generates it?

[roedygr]

Thanks for the tip.

BTW, I think this regular expression search should be "\<span class=".*"\>\</span\>" (without the outside quotes).

I will look into adding a message about "span" elements that don't contain any text in a future version.

The regex was a Funduc Search/Replace Regex which quirkly is prefix rather than postfix notation like Java.
see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/searchreplace.html

[roedygr]

Where does this junk come from?

1. Manually editing content in a text editor. Removing text without removing surrounding spans.

2. Hitting the macro key to generate span boiler plate accidentally/inappropriately