coldfingertips has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

If there were any hair left on my 20 year old head, I'd still be pulling them out...good thing for me I pulled the last hairs out last night over this!

I'm parsing a page that looks: 

Chat at Allpoetry.com 400 MB hosting with 5 GB traffic for $4.95 per m
+onth. Domain registration for $9.95. Hello. Login or Register? PoemsP
+oetsContestsColumnsClassAdd linesFunBulletinStoreHelp Chatter Archive
+s< Previous Chatter     |     Next Chatter >malevolent angel: if you 
+look closer, there are more than mods not doing anything in this chat
+terbox.....hell, i use to not even come near to it lol     (11 minute
+s ago)
demonwithin: ~coulda sworn he was drinking from goddess     (11 minute
+s ago)
sprkls926: *hits him in the side* get off     (11 minutes ago)
JurneesRainbow: check out contest: the enviroment!!!!!!!!!!!     (11 m
+inutes ago)
Foretold-Events: Well I wonder about those things hehe     (12 minutes
+ ago)
sprkls926: hey     (12 minutes ago)
< Previous Chatter     |     Next Chatter >  Featured Thank Youby Rube
+eIf Not For Youby CinaraSweet Rain (for Rubee)
by WolfbaneStarbuck colonicby Barbara DavidsonBorrowed Bracelet (hope 
+you don't mind)
by mystysaintmanage featured Chatterbox sprkls926: *kicks him again*de
+monwithin: ~pulls out the blade and flings it to the floor splatterin
+g sparkls with his blood~ take it up and do your worstmalevolent ange
+l: *enjoys the show from the shadows*demonwithin: ~spreads his arms l
+ike hes cruxified~sprkls926: *trys to back away from him*demonwithin:
+ strike if you may sprkls Online [101] ForgottenAn.. mystysaint symit
+ar Zez 216 visitorsshow all A network of sharing: All Poetry, Story W
+rite, All Philosophy, Old Poetry.

[download]
It took a day but finally I was able to line break where I needed to (after each set of ( .. ). But as you can see, there are things before and after the nice line breaks (the "Chat at Allpoetry.com 400 MB hosting with 5 GB traffic for $4.95 per month" lines and "< Previous Chatter | Next ". I tried using: 
for my $lines (@lines ) {
if ($lines =~ s/\)/\)<br>/g) { 
push @good,$lines;
}
}
@lines = @good;
print "@good";

[download]
Hoping to remove ANYTHING my line breaks didn't alter or find, but that didn't work and everything still prints out (all the junk ads). The $lines =~.. is what I need and use to line break, does anyone know a method to get rid of everything else?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: html parsing/regex
by artist (Parson) on Jul 30, 2003 at 19:54 UTC
    Hope this helps:

    (Updated as per message of the op) 

    local $/;
my $data = <DATA>;
my @good_lines;
while($data =~ m/Next Chatter \>(.*?)\< Previous Chatter/gs){
     $good_lines = $1;
     push @good_lines,$good_lines;
}
foreach  (@good_lines){
     my @lines = split /\n/;
     foreach (@lines){
       next unless $_;
       /([^:]+): (.+) \((\d+) minutes ago\)/;
           my( $name, $text, $delay ) = ( $1, $2, $3 );
       print "NAME:$name\nText:$text\nDelay:$delay\n\n";
     }
}

    [download]

    artist
[reply]
[d/l]
      This script has proven to be more difficult than originally planned and more difficult than it's worth :(

      I get: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: NAME: Text: Delay: So I think I misused a part of your script incorrectly because I'm not getting errors or anything. Did I mess up anywhere with 

      use strict;
use CGI qw/:standard/;

use HTML::Tree;
use LWP::Simple;

print header, start_html('test printing');

#my $count;
#until ($count eq "5") {
#$count++;
my $funky = "http://www.allpoetry.com/chat//page=1";


my $content = get($funky);

my $tree = HTML::Tree->new();

$tree->parse($content);


# retrieve the text and split into lines
my @lines = split "<br>", $tree->as_text;


local $/;
my @good_lines;
my $good_lines;



for my $lines (@lines) {
$lines =~ s/\)/\)<br>/g;

while($lines =~ m/Next Chatter \>(.*?)\< Previous Chatter/gs){
     $good_lines = $1;
     push @good_lines,$good_lines;
}
foreach  (@good_lines){

     my @lines = split /<br>/;
     foreach (@lines){
       next unless $_;
       /([^:]+): (.+) \((\d+) minutes ago\)/;
           my( $name, $text, $delay ) = ( $1, $2, $3 );
       print "NAME:$name\nText:$text\nDelay:$delay\n\n";
     }
}
}

      [download]
      Sorry I keep bugging you, I promise this'll be the last time (I think I'll give up for a while if nothing else works ((note to self: this is why you stopped using HTML:: modules in the first place)) ). Thanks for your help!
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