Brother Ignatius,

I understand and appreciate your comments.

If you haven't discovered it yet, run, don't walk, to CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. There you'll find an immense collection of tools to help you in this type of work. In particular, scan the list of modules by category. Categories that you may find of interest include "String, Language, and Text Processing", "Filehandles, Input, and Output", and possibly "Data Type Utilities".

There are other interesting tools right here in the Monastery, in the Code Catacombs. That area is categorized also; you may want to scan the Text Processing area.

HTH