My question is with HTML::Parser but I also wonder if I am approaching this issue the correct way. I am trying to parse through a web-page and pull out the information I want which I would like to write into a text file or into memory. Here is a sample of some of the web page: 
    tr
  </tr><tr>
    <td><font size="2" face="Arial,Helvetica">
    <hr size="2" width="100%">
    Title: <b>2004-10-15 Off Season Rosters</b><BR>
    Post by <b>sydvicious</b> on <b>Oct 15<sup>th</sup>, 2004, 7:24pm<
+/b>
    <hr width="100%" size="1">
    I know, the keeper years all say &quot;1&quot;.<br><br><pre><br>TR
+ANSACTIONS:<br><br>Scott - Activated Catalanotto_Frank/TOR; Waived Ca
+stilla_Vinny/COL<br>Scott - Activated Day_Zach/MON; Waived Reese_Poke
+y/BOS<br>Scott - Activated Hernandez_Runelvys/KCA; Waived Lowe_Derek/
+BOS<br>Scott - Activated VanBenschoten_John/PIT; Waived Quantrill_Pau
+l/NYA<br>Scott - Activated Williamson_Scott/BOS; Waived Reyes_Dennys/
+KCA<br>Sean - Activated Burnett_Sean/P

[download]

Obviously, this is a parial HTML listing from the web page. I am trying to pull the names in the HTML so I can do some other things to them. Using the following perl, I am able to use HTML::parser and my vague understanding of it to print out what I would like. My questions are: 1) can I have the print statement in the subroutine "text" directed into a file or into an array for use outside of the package? 2) is there another way that I can approach this problem that I am completely missing other than HTML::Parser? 
#!d:/perl56/bin

use strict;

{
package HTMLParser;
use base "HTML::Parser";

sub text
    {
        my ($self, $origtext) = @_;
        $origtext =~ s/&nbsp;//g;
        $self->{TEXT} .= $origtext;

        ### Read through hash and test each line against array
        @field = qw (C 1B 2B 3B SS OF1 OF2 OF3 DH B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6 B7
+ B8 SP1 SP2 SP3 SP4 SP5 SW1 SW2 SW3 SW4 SW5 SW6 SW7 RP1 RP2 RP3 RP4 R
+P5 RP6 RP7 IR);

        my @test = split(/\s*[ ]/,$origtext);
        
        foreach $line (@field) {
            if ($test[0] eq $line) {
                print "$test[1]\n";        
            }
        }

    }
}

my $leaguefile = $ARGV[0];
open(DATAFILE1,"$leaguefile") || die "Cannot open test file";

my $sp = new HTMLParser;

while (<DATAFILE1>) {
    $sp->parse_file($_);    
}
$sp->eof;

close DATAFILE1;

[download]

In reply to html::parser question by treebeard

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.