whenever I hear about complex parsing, and I think about module size, performance, scalability, maintainability... I always come to the same exact conclusion... someone should check out Parse::RecDescent

There have been some awsome comments on how to use Parse::RecDescent here in the monestary, look at some of merlyn's posts... however, the quick overview is simple (if you've never worked with parsers...) Parse::RecDescent will allow you to write a grammar that describes what it is that the data should look like, and the mechanisms by which it should be dissected and manipulated. If you are having to do a lot of conditional matching (eg If this match this else match that) then it may be a perfect job for a recursive descept parser... Give it a look, the docs are awsome, and if you have questions on it, I am sure some of the more knowledgable monks (talk to maverick) will be able to give you a hand on how to dissect Parse::RecDescent. Hope it goes well!