Strip some html tag without strip_tags

gistfile1.php

function strip_html_tags( $text )
{
    $text = preg_replace(
        array(
          // Remove invisible content
            '@<head[^>]*?>.*?</head>@siu',
            '@<style[^>]*?>.*?</style>@siu',
            '@<script[^>]*?.*?</script>@siu',
            '@<object[^>]*?.*?</object>@siu',
            '@<embed[^>]*?.*?</embed>@siu',
            '@<applet[^>]*?.*?</applet>@siu',
            '@<noframes[^>]*?.*?</noframes>@siu',
            '@<noscript[^>]*?.*?</noscript>@siu',
            '@<noembed[^>]*?.*?</noembed>@siu',
          // Add line breaks before and after blocks
            '@</?((address)|(blockquote)|(center)|(del))@iu',
            '@</?((div)|(h[1-9])|(ins)|(isindex)|(p)|(pre))@iu',
            '@</?((dir)|(dl)|(dt)|(dd)|(li)|(menu)|(ol)|(ul))@iu',
            '@</?((table)|(th)|(td)|(caption))@iu',
            '@</?((form)|(button)|(fieldset)|(legend)|(input))@iu',
            '@</?((label)|(select)|(optgroup)|(option)|(textarea))@iu',
            '@</?((frameset)|(frame)|(iframe))@iu',
        ),
        array(
            ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ', ' ',"$0", "$0", "$0", "$0", "$0", "$0","$0", "$0",), $text );
 
    // you can exclude some html tags here, in this case B and A tags        
    return strip_tags( $text , '<b><a>' );
}

function strip_spectags( $text ){
   
   $text = preg_replace(
        array(
          // Remove invisible content
            '@<iframe[^>]*?>.*?</iframe>@siu',
            '@<br.*?>@siu'
        ),
        array(
            ' ', ' '), $text );
   return $text;
}

If you're still around, thanks for the code. It works in most cases I've found. Where it doesn't work is when the html is somehow malformed in which case it seems to produce an empty string. In that case I just resort to a much slower dom method. I also added '@<a[^>]?.?a>@siu', to strip out all href's and the link text. The first time you hit a page with 178,000 a hrefs , it'll become apparent why.