s/<a[^\>]*>//g
Strip anchor tags from the current line (in vi, or sed, or just a generic regular expression)
The breakdown: s/foo/bar/ search for foo anf replace with bar. the //g means replace with nothing, the g meaning do it everytime, even more than once per line (globally)
<a : the first part of the anchor tag.
[^/>] = a character class that doesn't match the '>' character. Anything but the right angle bracket, since we're going to want to stop at that point.
* = zero or more of these.
> = the right angle bracket that ends an HTML tag.
I wrote this node so I never have to resort to usign sticky notes for regexp commands (in my atrocious handwriting). And I'm glad I did, cause my Palm III blew up. I had to give it a lobotomy.
So put it all together in regexp logic, and you get:
find a <a, erase anything you find until you get to the >, erase the >, and quit erasing, go look for another one on the same line.
Of course, this will fail if there are any PHP or ASP tags in the anchor tag.