Re: Getting the text of the html document

If I understand your question properly, I think you mean you want to strip out the HTML tags. If so, the following ought to do the trick

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
print "Content-type: text/html\r\n";
my $file="path/to/page.html";
open(fp, $file) or die "Couldn't open file: $!";

while ( my $output = <fp> ) {
  $output=~s/<[^>]*?>//g;
  $output=~s/&/&amp;/g;
  $output=~s/"/&quot;/g;
  $output=~s/</&lt;/g;
  $output=~s/>/&gt;/g;
  print $output . "\n";
};
close(fp);
[download]

My Site in Progress

Comment on Re: Getting the text of the html document Download Code

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Re^2: Getting the text of the html document by bradcathey (Prior) on Jun 20, 2005 at 12:34 UTC
Best to let one of the several CPAN modules do this for you. I'd look at HTML::Strip for starters. —Brad "The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men." George Eliot	[reply]
Re^2: Getting the text of the html document by CountZero (Bishop) on Jun 20, 2005 at 13:12 UTC
The only way to deal with HTML (or other mark-up languages) is to parse the HTML-code. A "simple" regex-solution is not guaranteed to work in all cases. CountZero "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law	[reply]
Re^3: Getting the text of the html document by dyer85 (Acolyte) on Jul 19, 2005 at 09:26 UTC
That's a good point. My little regexes there don't convert every single entity, but it strips EVERY tag, and converts the <'s, >'s, quotes, and ampersands. Not much else would be left behind, honestly. Regardless of that fact, bradcathey, seems to have a very nice solution which is much faster than regex anyway. My Site in Progress	[reply]
Re^4: Getting the text of the html document by davorg (Chancellor) on Jul 19, 2005 at 09:36 UTC
What would your regex do with a tag like this: `<img src="next.gif" alt="-->" />` [download] Honestly, it's best to use a real parser. -- <http://www.dave.org.uk> "The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club." -- Chip Salzenberg	[reply] [d/l]