If you are truly concerned with using what you understand then I humbly submit that you should stop using regular expressions. Why? Because I assure you that you have no concept how it really works. (Did you know that it can find fixed substrings *faster* than you can possibly scan the original string?)

Besides which I can guarantee that your brain doesn't work like Ilya's does. (Ilya is the guy responsible for most of the RE engine.)

What? You are unconvinced? You tell me that regular expressions are just too darned useful to give up? Let me think about that for a second...

Well I don't like OO very much either. I am quite vocal on that in fact. But OO is a useful tool. Whether or not I find it fun, I would be foolish to not learn how to use it and use it effectively. And indeed I have. Likewise no matter how much fun it might be for me to be tilly against the world (I can outcode them all!), in the real world that is a really bad way to do things.

So yes. Try to learn how things really work. But when it comes down to getting stuff done, don't let your research stop you from putting out a working solution. And no matter how much you learn from rolling your own, be aware that your code, with less testing, outside advice, etc, is going to be less mature, capable, secure and so on than existing standard solutions are. Yes, this is even going to be true most of the time when you are a hotshot programmer who really is better than the rest. (Which most of us are not going to be.)

Besides which, going it alone is more work. So do as Larry says, be lazy and learn to use CPAN. (Yes, even the modules from CPAN which are internally OO. Do you have to care if it works?)