Have you ever looked at HTML::Parser? try 'perldoc HTML::Parser' or look at cpan for it.

Objects of the HTML::Parser class will recognize markup
and separate it from plain text (alias data content) in
HTML documents.  As different kinds of markup and text are
recognized, the corresponding event handlers are invoked.
[download]

I would recommend against rolling your own, if you are new.

J. J. Horner
Linux, Perl, Apache, Stronghold, Unix
jhorner@knoxlug.org http://www.knoxlug.org/