I'm gonna go over the code you posted tomorrow morning... too much for my meager brain to parse error-free at this hour. ;)

The markup tags are not complex, nor can they be twisted to make themselves complex... they just get completely mangled and nested from time to time.

Unfortunately, the most immediate and obvious solutions are either ugly or are unavailable ... I.e. Parse::RecDecent requiring 5.005, when we need to run under 5.004.

Anyway - thank you for your responses, Kwin and everyone!