Using a regex to parse HTML is typically a bad idea. It's very, very easy to get wrong. The more HTML you have, the more likely the regex will have problems. Using a proper HTML parser will avoid these issues.

What you're looking for is fairly straightforward. Here's a basic shell of what you need (actually, it might be all you need). It uses File::Find to get the docs and HTML::TokeParser to find the meta tags. Original docs will be backed up with a .bak extension.

I will confess that I haven't done a huge amount of testing of this solution, so be careful!

use strict;
use File::Find;
use HTML::TokeParser;

my $bak_ext  = '.bak';
my $root_dir = '/temp';

find(\&wanted, $root_dir);

sub wanted {
    # if the extension fits...
    if ( /\.html?/i ) {
        print "Processing $_\n";
        my $new = $_;
        my $bak = $_ . $bak_ext;
        rename $_, $bak or die "Cannot rename $_ to $bak: $!";

        open NEW, "> $new" or die "Cannot open $new for writing: $!";

        my $p = HTML::TokeParser->new( $bak );
        while ( my $token = $p->get_token )    {

            # this index is the 'raw text' of the token
            my $text_index = $token->[0] eq 'T' ? 1 : -1;

            # it's both a start tag and a meta tag
            if ( $token->[0] eq 'S' and $token->[1] eq 'meta' )    {

                $token->[ $text_index ] =~ s/AA\.//g;
            }

            print NEW $token->[ $text_index ];
        }
        close NEW;
    } else {
        print "Skipping $_\n";
    }
}

[download]

Cheers,
Ovid

Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.

In reply to (Ovid -- don't use a regex) Re: changing data by Ovid
in thread changing data by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.