Use This AutoHotkey Trick to Remove HTML Code from Any Text

Last time in “Alternative Web Page HTML Download Techniques (AutoHotkey Tip),” I mentioned how I updated the GooglePhraseFix.ahk script by aaston86 to get it working again and make it a little more robust. The script uses a Google search page to autocorrect common expressions and people’s names. (It only works if Google thinks you may have made an error.)

For example, if you type “Ralph Nadal” the Spanish tennis player, selecting the name and using the CTRL+ALT+G Hotkey combination changes “Ralph Nadal” to “Rafael Nadal.” It only works for obvious possibilities, but may come in handy for correcting hard to remember spellings (i.e. “Jocavic” turns into “Djokovic”).

I added the phrase “Showing results for ” to the script as a search key in the Google results page. Google includes the phrase when it senses that you may have made a mistake. The original script used the StringReplace command to remove some HTML code and correct any apostrophes ('):

   StringReplace, clipboard, match2, <b><i>,, All
   StringReplace, clipboard, clipboard, </i></b>,, All
   StringReplace, clipboard, clipboard, ',', All

The StringReplace command can work for unchanging HTML tags but you need to add the command for each tag (or set of tags). By using the RegExReplace() function, you can remove all HTML code with one command.

HTML Tag Stripping Regular Expressions (RegEx) Using the RegExReplace() Function

The selected section of the Google page now includes a lot more HTML code than merely italics <i> and bold <b>. Using the following expression removes it all:

   var := RegExReplace(var,"<.+?>")

You don’t need to know anything about AutoHotkey Regular Expressions (RegEx) to use the above RegExReplace() function. The command removes all text found in var bounded by the arrow brackets (< … >).

Suppose you want to copy all the text from a Web page to a file. You could use the URLDownloadToFile command to copy the page source code, then execute the above RegExReplace() function to remove all of the HTML code. Only the plain text remains.