I'd use a finite state machine - googling that might get you started.

Mark

U can just make use of stack and java pattern matching package
(java.util.regex) ....

Here is the code to find tags in given html string:

   private static final String HTML_TAG_PATTERN = "<[^>]*>";
   private static final Pattern searchPattern =
Pattern.compile(HTML_TAG_PATTERN);

   private Matcher m = null;
   private String m_htmlStr = null;

   private boolean m_initDone = false;

   public void init(String htmlStr){

       m_htmlStr = htmlStr;
       m = searchPattern.matcher(m_htmlStr);

       m_initDone = true;

   }

   private String getNextTag() throws Exception {

       if (!m_initDone) {
           throw new Exception("Not yet initialized ....");
       }

       String tagToReturn = null;
       if (m.find()) {
           tagToReturn = m_htmlStr.substring(m.start(), m.end());
       }
       return tagToReturn;

   }

So, make use of a stack and push all the start tags and selectively pop
them up whenever u find an end tag and compare to find if the start and
end tags match.

Hope this helps

-Venkatesh

[posted and mailed]

Use a stack data structure.

Scan through the text looking for HTML tags.

When you encounter a start tag, push it on the stack.

When you encounter an end tag, pop the top element from the stack and
compare it to the end tag.

Cheers
GRB

   You might be interested in HTML Tidy:
http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

   - Oliver