Stripping HTML tags with regular expressions

So I need a regular expression to strip out all HTML tags EXCEPT the ones I've allowed.

I think I almost have it, but I can't get the negation right..

"/</?(^IMG|A|FONT|B|I|U|STRONG|EM|CODE|PRE|H1|H2|H3|H4|H5|H6)(.*)>?/i"

Now the ^ isn't negating because it's not in a class. So how would I negate all those tags (meaning match anything EXCEPT those?)

Also, what's a better alternative to the .* match so that they can't just throw a newline in there and **** things up?

As you note, the negation appears to not be working because '^' serves as a negator for character classes (the [] construct.)

Possibly you could set the match search to a negated match search? (Change the =~ ?)

Also, what's a better alternative to the .* match so that they can't just throw a newline in there and f*** things up?

I've read that trying [^>]* will encompass everything (including n) until the close of the tag; will this help?