If the problem domain were no more complex than the original poster's example, I personally wouldn't use HTML::Parser either.

It's always hard to gauge the knowledge level of a poster, and it's tempting to assume that people can walk the fine line between hand-rolling a simple, one-shot solution and not painting yourself into a corner.

I'd rather give a beginning programmer another tool to use than recommending a tricky use of an existing tool.

Different approach, judgment call on the part of anyone who answers the question. (If more people used HTML markup to express semantic divisions of a document, parsing would certainly be more useful).