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Greetings Monks,

I have some simple code to read-in an HTML file to an array, remove the image and anchor tags, and write these changes to the source file on my hard-drive. So far, so good.

1. Is there a better way to initialise the variable containing the pattern? Should it be a string literal of the tag i want to remove / change? The code's below, for your perusal.

Once I've read the file in , I'd like to check for the presence of the tags, and if true then call the subs which remove the tags/attributes. One of the brothers, a little while ago, thought that if I tested the patterns as they are at the moment, they would return 'true' as the value of the pattern variables were non-empty strings . Am I doing this right?

2. How may i go about testing for the presence of tags/attributes, without falling down this pit-fall?

I'm also looking into how to alter the font size values of in-line styles via the same approach.

Surely, there are better solutions...

Trix

#!/usr/bin/perl
# write mods to HTML file.plx
# Program will read in an html file, remove the img tag and rewrite HT
+ML on E-drive.
# 1. No need for file variable yet: open (INFILE, "<".$htmlFile) or di
+e("Can't read source file!\n");
# 2. Alternative: m/<A\s+HREF=[^>]+>(.*?)<\/A>/  - Will not remove clo
+sing tag though - why?
# 3. Why is interpreter flipping-out over an 'undefined variable', whe
+n
#    original regexp, m/<A\s+HREF=[^>]+>(.*?)<\/A>/, is known to work.
+ What am I missing?

use warnings;
use diagnostics;
use strict;

# Declare and initialise variables.
my $pattern1 = '<IMG\s+(.*)>';
my $pattern2 = '<A\s+HREF\s*=[^>]+>';
my $pattern3 = '</A>';
my @htmlLines;

# Open HTML test file and read into array.
open INFILE, "E:/Documents and Settings/Richard Lamb/My Documents/HTML
+/dummy1.html" or die "Sod! Can't open this file.\n";
@htmlLines = <INFILE>;

# Call tag-scrapping subs
scrapImageTag();
scrapAnchorTag();

# Removes image tag elements in array
sub scrapImageTag
{ # interates through each element (i.e. HTML line) in array
  foreach my $line (@htmlLines)
  {
    # replace <IMG ...> with nothing.
    $line =~ s/$pattern1//ig;  # case insensitivity and global search 
+for pattern
  }
}

# Removes anchor tag elements in array
sub scrapAnchorTag
{ # interates through each element (i.e. HTML line) in array
  foreach my $line (@htmlLines)
  {
    # replace <A HREF ...> with nothing.
    $line =~ s/$pattern2//ig;  # case insensitivity and global search 
+for pattern
    $line =~ s/$pattern3//ig;  # case insensitivity and global search 
+for pattern
  }
}

# Replacing original file with reformatted file!
open (OUTFILE, ">E:/Documents and Settings/Richard Lamb/My Documents/H
+TML/dummy1.html") or die("Can't rewrite the HTML file.\n");
print (OUTFILE @htmlLines);

close (INFILE);
close (OUTFILE);
[download]

Cheers,

update (broquaint): shifted <code> tags, added formatting and <readmore> tag

In reply to Regexps to change HTML tags/attributes by Tricky

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