I've been searching CPAN and looking around for a way to parse data in microsoft help files (.HLP files used for online help in many applications) and I'm not having any luck at all. Is there a way at a minimum to extract the text from these files, and better yet model their structure as a data structure?
At first I thought that they might just be bastardized .DOC files, or possibly even some twisted form of RTF, but near as I can tell neither of these is the case.
Does anybody have any pointers or tips on programmatically dealing with these things?