Delete an HTML element containing a pattern - html

Question

How can I delete elements (from <span> to </span>) whose text contain PATTERN in it? The contents of the element should be deleted along with the element.
For example, I want to delete the first <span>...</span> element in the following:
<span><SPAN>some text with
with </SPAN> a PATTERNin it etc</span><span><SPAN>some text
without </SPAN> a thingIn it etc</span>
to produce, using SED only :
<span><SPAN>some text
without </SPAN> a thingIn it etc</span>
PS: No help with end of lines or solo words, it must just detect any <span>...</span> and PATTERN.
Production server only allow basic commands such as SED.
I'm currently using the following but it's ugly and doesn't seem to work.
sed '/<span.*\n.*PATTERN.*<\/span>/d'

Answer 1

If HTML:
perl -MXML::LibXML -e'
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $doc = $parser->parse_html_file($ARGV[0]);
$_->unbindNode()
for $doc->findnodes(q{//span[contains(text(), "PATTERN")]});
binmode(STDOUT);
print($doc->toString());
' in.html >out.html
If XHTML:
perl -MXML::LibXML -e'
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $doc = $parser->parse_file($ARGV[0]);
my $xpc = XML::LibXML::XPathContext->new();
$xpc->registerNs( h => "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" );
$_->unbindNode()
for $xpc->findnodes(q{//h:span[contains(text(), "PATTERN")]}, $doc);
binmode(STDOUT);
print($doc->toString());
' in.xhtml >out.xhtml
The above both produce the following (with some implied elements vivified):
<span><SPAN>some text
without </SPAN> a thingIn it etc</span>