use HTML::Parser; my $file = 'example.html'; my ($in_div,$in_wanted_div) = (0,0); my @result; my $parser = HTML::Parser->new( api_version => 3, start_h => [\&start, "tagname, attr"], text_h => [\&text, "dtext"], end_h => [\&end, "tagname"], empty_element_tags => 1, ); $parser->parse_file($file); print join(', ',@result); sub start { my ($tag, $attr) = @_; return unless ($tag eq 'div'); if (exists $attr->{'class'} and $attr->{'class'} eq 'data') { $in_div = 1; $in_wanted_div = 1; push(@result, "$attr->{'id'}="); } else { $in_div++; } } sub text { my ($text) = @_; return unless $in_wanted_div; $text =~ s/\W//g; $result[-1] .= $text; } sub end { my ($tag) = @_; return unless ($tag eq 'div'); $in_div--; $in_wanted_div = 0 if not $in_div; }