HTML::Element method as_text() not performing as expected on <td> elements

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'd like to pull the text from some HTML::Element objects which in this case happen to be elements of type 'td' or table divisions. I can "dump" these elements properly, but for the sake of cleanliness I would prefer to just have the text written in these 'td' objects. E.g.

use HTML::TreeBuilder;

my $tree = HTML::TreeBuilder->new;
$filename = "websource2.txt";
$tree->parse_file($filename);
@tbodies = $tree->find('tbody');
@tds = @tbodies[0]->find('td');    
@data = @tds[1..6];
foreach(@data){
$_->dump();
}
[download]

... produces the output I expected, but replacing the method call dump() with as_text() or even as_HTML() produces no output or errors. I'm mystified. Any suggestions?

Comment on HTML::Element method as_text() not performing as expected on <td> elements Download Code

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Re: HTML::Element method as_text() not performing as expected on <td> elements by Anonymous Monk on Aug 31, 2011 at 04:37 UTC
I'm mystified. Any suggestions? I suggest a healthy dose of consulting the manual :) dump is a debugging method, it prints output as_text returns a string http://search.cpan.org/~jfearn/HTML-Tree-4.2/lib/HTML/Element.pm#$h-%3Edump%28%29 http://search.cpan.org/~jfearn/HTML-Tree-4.2/lib/HTML/Element.pm#$h-%3Eas_text%28%29	[reply]
Re^2: HTML::Element method as_text() not performing as expected on <td> elements by Anonymous Monk on Aug 31, 2011 at 05:40 UTC
Wow, good call :) I think I was too tired to realize that difference before, though I had in fact consulted the manual. Thanks!	[reply]
Re^3: HTML::Element method as_text() not performing as expected on <td> elements by Anonymous Monk on Aug 31, 2011 at 06:29 UTC
Wow, good call :) I think I was too tired to realize that difference before, though I had in fact consulted the manual. Thanks! I've been there many times :) mystified is code for erroneous assumption Sometimes you know which op/sub you're fuzzy on, so it means a simple `perldoc -f split`, but sometimes you can't zero in on your unknown, so it means writing a few programs, even if the assumption turns out not to be yours Its a good thing perl has features for checking lots of these assumptions, helps me cut my development time in half!	[reply] [d/l]
Re: HTML::Element method as_text() not performing as expected on <td> elements by charlesboyo (Beadle) on Aug 30, 2011 at 22:48 UTC
Shouldn't that be `@tds = $tbodies[0]->find('td'); # meaning find the tds in the the first element from the list of tbodys` Using `use strict;` and `use warnings;` would help.	[reply] [d/l] [select]