Hi,

Suppose I have a string $data which can contain a link with the
following format:

<a href=”/HTML LINK “ class=”SubLink”>TEXT<img src=”IMAGE LINK” width
=”8” height=”7” border=”0” hspace=”4”></a>

An example of such a link is the following:

<a href="/artikelen/Nieuws/1024894334943.html"
class="SubLink">LPF-achterban boos over uitspraken Herben<img
src="/ad.nl/images/more.gif" width="8" height="7" border="0"
hspace="4"></a>

Note that only the items typed in capitals are variable. 

Suppose I would then like to remove the following portion from the
link:
<img src="IMAGE LINK " width="8" height="7" border="0" hspace="4">

I need a command which removes this bit.
Can you give me a Perl command which I can use in a Perl script which
does this?

Suppose also that I have an aray of strings containing several of
these links. Can you also give me a Perl command which removes <img
src="IMAGE LINK " width="8" height="7" border="0" hspace="4"> from all
of the links in the array in one go?

Thanks,
Corne

The following line of Perl declares a variable called $imagelink and
assigns to it the first IMG tag it finds in a string called $data. If
the string contains no IMG tags, $imagelink will remain uninitialized,
and any later attempt to use it may cause fatal errors. Note that the
character inside the square brackets is a zero, not a capital O.

my $imagelink = ($data =~ m/(<img\s+src.*?>)/is)[0];

The following Perl fragment assumes that you have an array of strings
called @data_arr. It declares an array called @imagelink_arr, and adds
to it the first IMG tag, if any, found in each element of @data_arr.
You may later iterate over @imagelink_arr using the foreach operator,
or assign it wholesale to some other array.

my @imagelink_arr = ();
push @imagelink_arr, ($_ =~ m/(<img\s+src.*?>)/is) foreach @data_arr;

These examples have been tested using version 5.6 of the Perl
interpreter.

Consult Perldoc.com for further detail on the syntax of Perl regular
expressions.
http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html

Suggested search terms:
perl regex regular expression manual help

Regards,
leapinglizard

This piece of code should do:

$table[1] = $table[0] = '<a
href="/artikelen/Nieuws/1024894334943.html"
class="SubLink">LPF-achterban boos over uitspraken Herben<img
src="/ad.nl/images/more.gif" width="8" height="7" border="0"
hspace="4"></a>';

# parse
for ($i=0; $i<@table; $i++)
{
	$table[$i] =~ s/(<a href.*? class="SubLink">.*)<img .*?>(.*)/$1$2/gi;
} 

# test
foreach  $t (@table) 
{
	print("$t\n");
}

#you have your variable $data already to the string you mentioned.
# this code will strip the image from the $data string
$data =~ s/<img[^>]*>//;

#if you have a perl numeric array, $data, the easiest way is like this:

for($x=0; $x<= $#data; $x++) {
  $data[$x] =~ s/<img[^>]*>//;
  print $data[$x]; print "\n";
}

> my $imagelink = ($data =~ m/(<img\s+src.*?>)/is)[0]; 

That can also be written (prettier) as:

my ($imagelink) = $data =~ /(<img\s+src.(?>)/is;


As for parsing HTML with a regex: don't. The perldoc "perlfaq9" says:

***

       How do I remove HTML from a string?

               The most correct way (albeit not the fastest) is
               to use HTML::Parser from CPAN.  Another mostly
               correct way is to use HTML::FormatText which not
               only removes HTML but also attempts to do a little
               simple formatting of the resulting plain text.

               Many folks attempt a simple-minded regular expres-
               sion approach, like "s/<.*?>//g", but that fails
               in many cases because the tags may continue over
               line breaks, they may contain quoted angle-brack-
               ets, or HTML comment may be present.  Plus, folks
               forget to convert entities--like "&lt;" for exam-
               ple.

               Here's one "simple-minded" approach, that works
               for most files:

                   #!/usr/bin/perl -p0777
                   s/<(?:[^>'"]*|(['"]).*?\1)*>//gs
               If you want a more complete solution, see the
               3-stage striphtml program in
               http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/Tom_Chris-
               tiansen/scripts/striphtml.gz .

               Here are some tricky cases that you should think
               about when picking a solution:

                   <IMG SRC = "foo.gif" ALT = "A > B">

                   <IMG SRC = "foo.gif"
                        ALT = "A > B">

                   <!-- <A comment> -->

                   <script>if (a<b && a>c)</script>

                   <# Just data #>

                   <![INCLUDE CDATA [ >>>>>>>>>>>> ]]>

               If HTML comments include other tags, those solu-
               tions would also break on text like this:

                   <!-- This section commented out.
                       <B>You can't see me!</B>
                   -->

***

HTML::TreeBuilder's lookdown method can be quite handy for simple HTML parsing.