thanks for not telling me to use a module

But he did tell you (or rather, nudge you) to use warnings, which you blithely ignored. At some point you should step up to the realization that perl (the interpreter) can help you write better, less buggy code.

thanks for not telling me to use a module

Then I'll do the honors:

• HTML::Parser
• HTML::PullParser
• HTML::TokeParser
• HTML::LinkExtor
• HTML::TreeBuilder
• etc. etc.

Ah, here's an interesting thread: How to use Regular Expressions with HTML
Please read the whole thread, esp. the replies by Ovid.