Hi Paul--
Rather than trying to hack the table markup, I'd recommend using the custom table functions in ACL to check for this. For example, to get the breakpenalty for the row containing the caret, use something like this:
$oid = oid_caret();
$cell = tbl_oid_cell($oid);
$row = tbl_cell_row($cell);
tbl_obj_attr_get($row, "BREAK_PENALTY", $bp);
# the row break priority will now be stored in $bp
Note that this will tell you the name of the setting, rather than the numeric value you see if you view source on the PI.
Check the help center ACL reference. There's a whole slew of functions for doing stuff with tables, most of them start with "tbl_". You can search for "row table attributes" to find the topic that lists all the things you can ask for on a row object via tbl_obj_attr_get(). (There are similar lists for cells, columns, grids, etc., as well as a list of shared table attributes that all table objects have.)
I always try to do table work using these functions, because hacking the underlying table markup directly can sometimes be unpredictable and crash-prone.
If you really really want to examine the settings on the PI, use oid_content($pi_oid, 1) and parse the string.
--Clay