I have this file: 

```
    <table>
    <tr>
    <td WIDTH="49%">
    <p><a href="...1.htm"> cell to remove</a></p></td>
    <td WIDTH="51%"> some text </td>
    </tr>

```

I need as result this:

```
    <table>
    <tr>
    <td> 
    </td>
    <td WIDTH="51%"> some text </td>
    </tr>

```

I am trying to read the file with this html and replace my first tag with an empty one:

```
   ret = open('rec1.txt').read()
   re.sub('<td[^/td>]+>','<td> </td>',ret, 1)
   final= open('rec2.txt', 'w')
   final.write(ret)
   final.close()

```

As you can see i am new using python and something, when i read rec2.txt it contains exactly the same text of the previous file.

tks