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Hey monks, I'd like to fill a database with values that I grab from 50000 html documents. There is no API available and I can't decide what method to use to parse the html structure.

Right now I have saved all the files locally (later on a direct access via web would be great) and they look like this:

... (the usual html, head, body tags, a table, some text)

<table width=75%><tr><td width=50%><table width=95%><tr><td width=45% 
+valign=top>
<table width=100% cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td 
+colspan=2 height=30><font size=4><center>tool1_name</center></font></
+td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#999999><td width=70%>
<b>heading_1</b>
</td><td width=30%></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>drill diameter:</font></td>      
+                              <td><font size=1>936</font></td></tr>

<tr bgcolor=#CCCCCC><td><font size=1>drill depth:</font></td>         
+                           <td><font size=1>20</font></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>drill speed:</font></td>         
+                   <td><font size=1>4</font></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#CCCCCC><td><font size=1>drill material:</font></td>      
+                              <td><font size=1>506</font></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>height:</font></td>              
+                      <td><font size=1>502</font></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#CCCCCC><td><font size=1>width:</font></td>               
+             <td><font size=1>6</font></td></tr>

<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>angle:</font></td>               
+                 <td><font size=1>2.76</font></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#CCCCCC><td><font size=1>cooling liquid:</font></td>      
+                          <td><font size=1>14</font></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>manufactured in:</font></td>     
+                               <td><font size=1>27</font></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#CCCCCC><td><font size=1>lane code:</font></td>           
+                     <td><font size=1>76</font></td></tr>

<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>quality test 1:</font></td>      
+                              <td><font size=1>581 (11.4%)</font></td
+></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#CCCCCC><td><font size=1>quality procedure:</font></td>   
+                                 <td><font size=1>19,021</font></td><
+/tr>
<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>quality test 2:</font></td>      
+                          <td><font size=1>843 (90.1%)</font></td></t
+r>
<tr bgcolor=#CCCCCC><td><font size=1>package worth:</font></td>       
+                             <td><font size=1>$257,524</font></td></t
+r>
<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>single unit worth:</font></td>   
+                                 <td><font size=1>$90,945</font></td>
+</tr>

<tr bgcolor=#CCCCCC><td><font size=1>colour:</font></td>              
+              <td><font size=1>48</font></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>coating:</font></td>             
+               <td><font size=1>2,602</font></td></tr>
</table><br>
<table width=100% cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr bgcolor=#999999><td 
+width=70%>
<b>sells</b>
</td><td width=30%></td></tr>
<tr bgcolor=#DFDFDF><td><font size=1>sold this month:</font></td>     
+                   <td><font size=1>118</font></td></tr>

<tr bgcolor=#CCCCCC><td><font size=1>sold in plant A:</font></td>
(...)
[download]

There are about 110 unique values in 12 tables that I have to grab. On the pages are always two sets of these values: first the values (110 values in 12 tables) of a reference drill, then the values that are interesting to me.

So how do I parse these files quickly, reading all these values (stripped of dollar signs, commas, percentages) as quickly as possible?

I guess I'd use File::Slurp to store a file in a scalar, then HTML::TableExtract (How do I get the second occurrence?)? Or should I use a regex (how do I get the second occurrence?)? Or a template (how?)?

I'd be very grateful for your ideas and I really would appreciate code-snippets as I am really new to perl (replacing a bash script (yep) now...

Thanks!

In reply to how to quickly parse 50000 html documents? by brengo

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