> (anyone know of a C++ regex library?).

Yes.

1. Look up the source code by Rosimildo Da Silva, 1998, "based on the implementation of a regular expression engine written by the legendary Henry Spencer originally in "C" around 10 years ago." - at www.connecttel.com.
I tried it on WinNT about a year ago - it worked. I did not use it much.

2. If you are into COM on Win32, you can instantiate and call from C++ (or from VB* if you prefer ;-) the RegExEngine that comes with VBScript. Look up the article by Dino Esposito, at www.comdeveloper.com. It works as advertized. I can send you the source code of my console app demo, including a more complete RegExp.h. For the regex doc, look up the VBScript material - at clinic/scripting.

HTH
Rudi