Help With Matching

[FLAHERTY, JIM-CONT]

I am trying to substite , I want to replace   <> between the words and
replacing them with  </td><td> 
because I am reading a file that is uploaded and making a table in a web
page when this script is run 
 
 
 
 
$test1 = " the is a test";
 
$test1 = s/<>/</td></td>/g 
 
 
 
 
 
I dont get the desired result , can anyone help ?