# Extracting text

**URL:** <https://rubytalk.org/t/extracting-text/6814>\
**Category:** ruby-talk\
**Created:** [11 July 2003 19:51 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/extracting-text/6814 "2003-07-11T19:51:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Berger\_Daniel2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9fc348/32.png) [@Berger\_Daniel2](https://rubytalk.org/u/Berger_Daniel2)\
**Post date:** [11 July 2003 19:51 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/extracting-text/6814/1 "2003-07-11T19:51:22Z")

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I suspect you’ll want to use a parser, instead of regular expressions, to  
parse HTML. There’s an html-parser module on the RAA, though I haven’t used  
it myself.

Regards,

Dan

> **···**
>
> > -----Original Message-----  
> > From: Tim Hunter [[mailto:Tim.Hunter@sas.com](mailto:Tim.Hunter@sas.com)]  
> > Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 12:36 PM  
> > To: [ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org](mailto:ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org)  
> > Subject: Re: extracting text
> > 
> > Here’s one answer to your question. Watch out, almost any  
> > change to the input will break it.
> > 
> > irb(main):012:0\> s = “Some text”  
> > “Some text”  
> > irb(main):013:0\> m = %r{\<TD [^\>]+\>([^\<]+)}.match(s)  
> > #MatchData:0x276f978 irb(main):014:0\> p m[1] “Some text”  
> > nil irb(main):015:0\>
> > 
> > On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:46:44 -0400, “Dan” [falseflyboy@yahoo.comNONO](mailto:falseflyboy@yahoo.comNONO) \> wrote:
> > 
> > > I have a HTML table which I would like to extract text  
> > > inside a .  
> > > For an example Some text
> > > 
> > > I can write a code that detects the beginning of TD…  
> > > print line ~= “”
> > > 
> > > But how do I make it stop at . In the code above, I  
> > > just want to  
> > > print “Some text”
> > > 
> > > thanks