I think this sort of thing is what makes Perl shine above many other languages - you can really do some amazing things with plowing through text and getting information out of it.

You might want to check out a couple of O'Reilly books. One is called Spidering Hacks; the other is called Google Hacks. Both are useful. The Spidering Hacks book uses Perl exclusively for its examples. I recommend them both.