scan html: sep = "<td>"

entry from html:

  <tr bgcolor=#9090f0><td align="right"><b>BM</b></td><td> 
0.952</td><td> 0.136</td><td> 6.984</td><td>0.000000</td></tr>
  <tr bgcolor=#9090f0><td align="right"><b>BH</b></td><td> 
1.338</td><td> 0.136</td><td> 9.821</td><td>0.000000</td></tr>



 using
left.data<- scan(paste(path, left.file, sep = ""), what = 'character',
               sep=c("<td>", "</td>"))


yields

 > left.data

 [1] "  "                  "tr bgcolor=#9090f0>" "td align=right>"
 [4] "b>BM"                "/b>"                 "/td>"
 [7] "td> 0.952"           "/td>"                "td> 0.136"
[10] "/td>"                "td> 6.984"           "/td>"
[13] "td>0.000000"         "/td>"                "/tr>"
[16] "  "                  "tr bgcolor=#9090f0>" "td align=right>"
[19] "b>BH"                "/b>"                 "/td>"
[22] "td> 1.338"           "/td>"                "td> 0.136"
[25] "/td>"                "td> 9.821"           "/td>"
[28] "td>0.000000"         "/td>"                "/tr>"

why doesn't it detect the whole '<tr> as sep?


Uwe Ligges wrote:

Christoph Lehmann wrote:

Hi
I try to import html text and I need to split the fields at each <td> 
or </td> entry

How can I succeed? sep = '<td>' doens't yield the right result

If it fits pairwise together, use
  sep=c("<td>", "</td>")

if not, you can read the whole lot with readLines and strsplit for 
both pattern after that, for example.

Uwe Ligges

thanks for hints