Off-Topic: Parse an html file and transfer the text found

[John Toliver]

I have a CD which came with a textbook I use for school.  The CD is a
list of commonly prescribed drugs.  I am entering these drugs one by
one into a database I've created.  I thought about it and since the
files are html files called in a number of ways via what looks like
javascript, I was thinking that I could build a script using some
language, maybe PERL or python and program it to parse the html file
and transfer it to the my hsqldb, and place the information into the
proper fields in the database.

So my question to start is which language should I use to pull the
data out of an html file?  Is perl better for this application, or is
python better or some other language?

I'm probably going to need to brush up on my regular expressions for
this but that's ok too.

Any thoughts would be appreciated...

-- 
I've discovered the key to success is to never give up. You either
learn the right way, or you run out of ways to do it wrong. A win/win
situation!