title: php regex to remove HTML
body: <p>Before we start, strip_tags() doesn't work. </p>
  
  <p>now, </p>
  
  <p>I've got some data that needs to be parsed, the problem is, I need to get rid of all the HTML that has been formated very strangely. 
  the tags look like this:
  (notice the spaces)</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt; p &gt; blah blah blah &lt; / p &gt; &lt; a href= " link.html " &gt; blah blah blah &lt; /a &gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>All the regexs I've been trying aren't working, and I don't know enough about regex formating to make them work. I don't care about preserving anything inside of the tags, and would prefer to get rid of the text inside a link if I could. </p>
  
  <p>Anyone have any idea? </p>
  
  <p>(I really need to just sit down and learn regular expressions one day)</p>