[R] regex question

[Ferry]

hello,

i am trying to extract text using regex as follows:

"*  < <* this is my text > > "

into:

"this is my text"

below what I did:

varReg <- "*  < <* this is my text > > "

## either this pattern
patReg <- "(^[ <*]+)"
## or below patten
patReg <- "([ > ]+$)"

sub(patReg, '', varReg)

depending of which patten I use, I could only extra the first portion
or the last portion of the unwanted characters. how to extract both
ends and keep my text "this is my text" ?

I have tried with gsub, as below:
patReg <- "([ >* ]+)"
gsub(patReg, '', varReg)

but it returned "thisismytext"

any idea is appreciated.

thanks,

ferry