While I agree that using Parse::RecDescent may be overkill, particularly in this day and age of XML-based file formats, it's still a good idea if you want to be a jack-of-all-trades to have understanding and ability to do grammar parsing; at some point, if you are building custom applications, you'll undoubtable come across a grammar-based format that no other parsing method would easily work with. My impression from Ovid's request was that while there were many other ways, possibly simpler, to do this, learning P::RD was a subgoal of this solution.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain
It's not what you know, but knowing how to find it if you don't know that's important