Small regex to parse HTML

[spydermonkey]

Hey everyone. I am having a little trouble parsing a website with a small regex. I believe it has something to do with the greediness of .* but I don't know of another way around it.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

use LWP::Simple;

##############################
# Configuration section
##############################

my $url = 

"[URL unfurl="true"]http://rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/BidRequests/ShowBidRequests.asp?lngBidRequestListType=3&optSortTitle=2&lngBidRequestCa[/URL]

tegoryId=-1&txtMaxNumberOfEntriesPerPage=10&optBidRequestPhase=2&lngSortColumn=-6&blnModeVerbose=True&optBiddingExpiration=1"

;

my $file = "rac.txt";

##############################
# Do not edit below this line
##############################

open (LOG, "$file") or die "Cannot open file $file: $!";
my $saved = <LOG>;
if (!defined $saved)
{
  $saved = "0";
}
close(LOG);

my $content = get("$url");

print $content;

$content =~ m!<td colspan="2"><font size="1" color="white"><b>Title(.*)<b>Search Results: </b>!;

$content = $1;

print "content: $1";

if ($saved ne "0" && $saved ne $content)
{
   print "\a\a\a";
  
   open(LOG, "> $file") or die "Cannot open file $file: $!";
   print LOG $content;
   close(LOG); 
}
elsif ($saved eq "0")
{
   open(LOG, "> $file") or die "Cannot open file $file: $!";
   print LOG $content;
   close(LOG); 
}

I test print $content prior to the regex and it's holding the entire source code as expected. After the regex the $1 keeps returning an uninitialized value error. I am trying to match EVERYTHING between

<td colspan="2"><font size="1" color="white"><b>Title

and

<b>Search Results: </b>

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for your help!

 

[duncdude]

#!/usr/bin/perl

$html = '<td colspan="2"><font size="1" color="white"><b>Title-XYZ<b>Search Results: </b>';

$html =~ m|<[^>]+><[^>]+><b>Title([^<]+)<b>Search Results: </b>|;

print $1;

Kind Regards
Duncan

 

[spydermonkey]

Thanks.

I tried that regex and it provides the same results

 

[PaulTEG]

why not just use a split (or two) to the line you want, and then use sdubstitution to replace the table tags with new lines
--Paul

It's important in life to always strike a happy medium, so if you see someone with a crystal ball, and a smile on their face ...

 

[duncdude]

spydermonkey

It does break up the string as I tested it:-

<td colspan="2"><font size="1" color="white"><b>Title[blue]-XYZ[/blue]<b>Search Results: </b>

$1 captures -XYZ

maybe you haven't explained the exact structure of the HTML - or I haven't understood it quite right

please give a couple of examples and specify what you would like to extract


Kind Regards
Duncan

 

[ishnid]

As a general rule, it's usually a bad idea to try and parse HTML using regexps. You're almost always using a proper tag-aware parser (HTML::TokeParser::Simple is my personal favourite).