Regex syntax

[!NoItAll]

I'm trying to remove the following from a string
Any occurance of

<br> </br> <br clear="all"> <br/> <br />

Here's my string

<br></br><br clear="all">Hello bright girl<br/><br /></br>

I am trying the .net regex like this

sLine = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(sLine, "<\/?br.*>", String.Empty, RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

and it just doesn't work the way I think it should! I wind up with the following string: <b><h1>
and that's it!
What is wrong with my syntax?

Here's my thinking
< is the literal
\/? escapes the / so I am looking for 0 or 1 / (forward slash)
br is a literal string because I'm looking for "br"
.* I am looking for 0 to many of any character
> the closing literal

I've tried all kinds of combinations - and get close...

The following pattern works pretty well: "<\/?br\W*>"

I get the following string:
<b><h1><br clear="all">Hello bright girl</h1></b>

For some reason, however, it misses the <br clear="all">

[Markus]

Apply the same logic for your leading forward slash, that is, make the " clear='all'" optional.

Regex: <\/?br.*?>

[!NoItAll]

Superb - thank you. I did not think you could "stack" * and ? together to accomplish this.
I did find a site that helps a lot. It's a pretty elegant regex text application!

http://www.gskinner.com/RegExr/

It helps because you can just play with it until you get something to work...

[Markus]

Glad I could be of help.

I prefer the desktop solutions for regex testing - there's also a good plugin for firefox :)