For something of a simpler* solution, but in the same vein, there's HTML::TreeBuilder. HTML::Element provides all of the primitives that you really need for an operation like this: look_down to identify relevant elements, replace_with_content to "remove" a tag without removing what it contains, and delete to completely destroy all signs of a given element. I'm not up to writing an example right now, but it's truly simple. Give it a shot! It goes a long way, and the output is bound to be less of a mess than the input.

* edit: okay, I realized that some might be confused by this usage of simple, since trwww's example is pretty simple in itself. Mostly it's a matter of being allowed to think in terms of tree manipulations instead of opens and closes and stacking and de-stacking. The corresponding cost is in storage, but it's usually not worrisome.

In reply to Re^2: Simplify HTML programatically by hobbs
in thread Simplify HTML programatically by guha

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