code: def get_html_column_count(html_string):
      
      try:
          from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
      except ImportError:
          print("ERROR: You must have BeautifulSoup to use html2data")
          return
  
      soup = BeautifulSoup(html_string, 'html.parser')
      table = soup.find('table')
      if not table:
          return 0
  
      column_counts = []
      trs = table.findAll('tr')
      if len(trs) == 0:
          return 0
  
      for tr in range(len(trs)):
          if tr == 0:
              tds = trs[tr].findAll('th')
              if len(tds) == 0:
                  tds = trs[tr].findAll('td')
          else:
              tds = trs[tr].findAll('td')
  
          count = 0
          for td in tds:
              if td.has_attr('colspan'):
                  count += int(td['colspan'])
              else:
                  count += 1
  
          column_counts.append(count)
  
      return max(column_counts)
docs: Gets the number of columns in an html table.
  
      Paramters
      ---------
      html_string : str
  
      Returns
      -------
      int
          The number of columns in the table