in reply to Writing a parser

The first thing to do would be to access the complexity of the data to be parsed, along with the volumes and performance requirements.

Use Parser::RecDescent would probably be too slow and overkill if your need is to parse large quantities of CSV data, but would be perfect for tokenising a complex language with recursive elements.

A indication, and a small sample of the data to be parsed would get you a better range of responses and possible solutions.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible
3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom