Hello, have you considered Jython? This allows you to call Python from Java or Java from Python.

Admittedly, Python's string handling is not as nice as Perl's (regexps are not built into the Python core language - you have to use the re module), but it will still be a hell of a lot simpler than a Java only solution.

Python is very easy to pick up, especially if you already know Perl. Good luck!