Regular Expression - syntax errors

I've spent the better part of a week trying to come up with a regular expression (or series of them) to manipulate a text string. Unfortunately, what I thought would work is throwing a "syntax error" when trying to load the ASP page. The patterns I'm trying to match are:

((?<!</tr>)\r\n)|((?<=>)( |\t)+|( |\t)+(?=<))|(\s*\*\s*)

The intended purpose of the above pattern is to remove all line breaks except those following a table row closing tag (</tr>), remove all leading and trailing whitespace between a closing tag(>) and opening tag(<), and remove any asterisk and it's leading or trailing whitespace. There appears to be errors in the first two alternations, but the third checks out fine.


([<][^>]*[>])+

The intention of this pattern is to replace all html tags with a pipe (consecutive tags treated as one). This appears to be OK, but I included it to show the flow of what I'm trying to accomplish.


(^\|)|((?<=\r\n)\|)|\|((?=\r))

The intention of this pattern is to remove all pipes from the beginning of the string, and from the beginning and end of each line. The first and third alteration appear OK, but the error shows in the middle alternation.


Can anyone spot what is throwing the errors? I am admittedly far from an expert here, but these look right to me, although I'm sure I'm missing something. Hopefully someone with a more experienced eye can easily find what I've done wrong. I would greatly appreciate any help.

26 views so far, and not a response. Hmm, must be a tough one.

Actually, I read a little something today that , if true, explains it rather simply: VB doesn't support the "look around" set of regular expressions. Can anyone verify if this is true?

What version of VB?

I suppose it's .NET since I don't find any regex built in to VB6. Take a look around here, perhaps the docs will answer your question. I use neither regex's or NET with much regularity.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/e...ageElements.asp

Actually, it's VBscript I'm working with on an ASP page. As far as I can tell from the MSDN library, it should work. No mention of limitations of the "look around" functions. Still puzzled...