[R] read.socket - Strange strings. How to force sub to remove all occurences of a pattern?

[wolski]

I am opening a connection to an apache server sending a get and then I am reading from the socket.
All works finde except that I am getting some strange strings disrupting the html
e.g.

<FON\r\nffb\r\nT COLOR ...

\r\na48\r\n
  \r\nffb\r\n 

They are not frequent ( a few of them) but of course make live hard. 
I cant observe them with lynx --source they dont occure. 

I am trying a workaround with sub. But it removes only the first occurence.
How I can force sub to remove all occurences of a pattern and not only the first?

Eryk