The default record seperator is a tab. I recommend you use it since just about any character is fair game for a node title.

Maybe you could add an other option, -r for example that would replace $SEP:

# option definition becomes(sorry to break the push ;--(
getopts('p:u:s:r:h',\%opts);

# replacement string initialization
my $REP= $opts{r} || " ";

# loop that processes the links
while (my $tag = $parser->get_tag('a')) {
          if ($tag->[1]->{href} =~ /node_id=(\d+)/) {
                     my $text= $parser->get_text;
                     $text=~ {$SEP}{$REP}go;
                     print $1 . $SEP . $text . "\n";
          }
}
[download]