i'm think how would i extract the string before SPAN tag. Example

Hey dude, how's ya<span id="more-10"></span>yo how's life?          =>        Hey dude, how's ya

thanks in advance. 

Several alternatives:

1) use your programming language to locate the the "<span" string and then extract all characters up to but not including the point you have just found

2) the simple regex answer is:

^([^<]*)<span

and look at match group #1. However, this will also grab any other tags etc. that come before the '<span' text such as "<abc/>text that I want<span id="qwe"></span>" will return "<abc/>text that I want".

3) using the pattern:

(?<=>|^)([^<>]*)<span

which will solve the above issue. It assumes that you are only dealing with a single line (if not, then add "\n" into the character set).

Susan