If what you are tryuing to do is extract the data from the table then the following code using HTML::TreeBuilder and HTML::ElementTable may be a good starting point for you:

use strict;
use warnings;
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::TreeBuilder;
use HTML::ElementTable;

my $page = get ('http://www.ovt.ncsu.edu/cotton_soy/2004/table_11.html
+');
my $root = HTML::TreeBuilder->new_from_content ($page);
my $theTable = $root->find ('table');

die "Table not found" if ! defined $theTable;

$theTable = HTML::ElementTable->new_from_tree($theTable);

for my $row (1..$theTable->maxrow()-2)
  {
  for (0..$theTable->maxcol())
    {
    my $cellText = $theTable->cell ($row, $_)->as_text ();
    print "$cellText ";
    }

  print "\n";
  }
[download]

Note that $theTable->maxrow()-2 ignores the last two rows to avoid a problem with missing cells in those rows and the first row is skipped for the same reason.

The   are being replaced with the appropriate unicode character. You're seeing it as a pair or "random" characters because you're trying to view UTF-8 output as another character set.

The fix is to find out which character the character, then use it to replace the character with a space. Manually find the position of a non-breaking space in a string and display its character number using:
printf("nbsp is \\x{%04X}\n", ord(substr($string, $pos, 1)));
Then you'll know what to use instead of \x{1234} in
s/\x{1234}/ /g;
in order to replace non-breaking spaces with normal spaces.

A couple of observations regarding two of the modules being mentioned, HTML::TableExtract and HTML::ElementTable:

These play much better together than they used to in times past. So now you can use HTML::TableExtract to automatically return an HTML::ElementTable structure if you want, thereby bypassing the HTML::Parser code if you so desire:

  use HTML::TableExtract qw(tree);

  my $te = HTML::TableExtract->new();
  my $table = $te->first_table_found();
  # $table is an HTML::ElementTable structure
  # ... maybe edit the tree structure here
  print $table->as_HTML;
[download]

Also, since you're fairly new to both modules, I'll point out that the normal operation of HTML::TableExtract is to return the raw text, stripped of all html. It is very similar in structure to the above code:

  use HTML::TableExtract;

  my $te = HTML::TableExtract->new();
  my $table = $te->first_table_found();
  foreach my $row ($table->rows) {
    foreach my $cell (@$row) {
      ... maybe edit text
    }
  }
[download]

Alternatively, you can preserve the HTML in each cell as text:

  use HTML::TableExtract;

  my $te = HTML::TableExtract->new(keep_html => 1);
  my $table = $te->first_table_found();
  foreach my $row ($table->rows) {
    foreach my $cell (@$row) {
      ... maybe edit html text
    }
  }
[download]

Another option for H::TE that you might find useful is the 'decode' option for when you're extracting in text mode (without keeping the html). When this is disabled (decode => 0 ... it's enabled by default) then your codes for things such as 'nbsp' are not translated into their actual character -- that might make it easier for search and replace type operations.

Cheers,
Matt

Thanks mojo (and gu)for the info, as I thought I was missing something (besides experience).

Was not sure if there was more to the modules, something different with active perl under XP or some other thing I was unaware of.

Going to digest this over the Xmas holiday after hitting the books, or taking a mental break and starting fresh "next year".

 for (0..$theTable->maxcol())
    {
    my $cellText = $theTable->cell ($row, $_)->as_text ();
    
    
#  Next two lines are for searching and replacing nbsp's with regular
# spaces or evaluate such that if $celltext ='s nbsp or * not 
#to print it   
#   printf("nbsp is \\x{%04X}\n", ord(substr($string, $pos, 1)));
#   printf("nbsp is \\x{%04X}\n", ord(substr($cellText, $row, 1)));
#    s/\x{1234}/ /g;


    print "$cellText ";
    }
[download]

my $NBSP = HTML::Entities::decode_entities(' ');

$foo =~ s/$NBSP//g ;
[download]