wow, thanks! Errto was right, it was the greedy .+ that was messing me up in the first place, but i've dropped that monster of a regex in favor of the line-by-line approach suggested by graff and bobf...it works like a charm, and much faster, too.

i'm building an OO interface around this parser, so it will be up on the CPAN as a module once i finish. naturally, i'll note all the help i got here.

and if there are any gamers here, i belong to a clan (NAEA) that has our own server, feel free to come join us. FEAR multiplayer is free :)