Refactored and commented strip_tags utility

def strip_tags(value):

    """Returns the given HTML with all tags stripped."""

    while True:

        if not ('<' in value or '>' in value):

            return value

    # Note: in typical case this loop executes _strip_once once. Loop condition

    # is redundant, but helps to reduce number of executions of _strip_once.

    while '<' in value and '>' in value:

        new_value = _strip_once(value)

        if new_value == value:

            # _strip_once was not able to detect more tags

            return value

        else:

            break

        value = new_value

    return value

strip_tags = allow_lazy(strip_tags)