I've got an archive of scripts, and I'd like to be able to mark them up in some way, for searching, so that they distinguish between, say, stage directions and speech, or find each character's speeches -- for instance: 

<stage-direction>Enter Fred, stage right</stage-direction>
<speech>FRED: Hey everyone, what's up?</speech>

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or maybe

<stage-direction>Enter Fred, stage right</stage-direction>
<speech character="Fred">Hey everyone, what's up?</speech>

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and I know that this goes against the "do it properly" ethos, but if I didn't want to use XML, has anybody got any suggestions for an XML-like custom markup which makes flat text files easy to search?

It doesn't have to be case-insensitive or even whitespace-independent, say if it was just: 

begin-stage-direction
Enter Fred, stage right
end-stage-direction

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That would be cool. Then it can just be read with some regex/for-loop thing like: 

if(/^begin-stage-direction/){
  $notice_next_line = 1;
}else{
  next;
}

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kind of construct.

I know there's a big "why not do it properly in a database" hanging over this, but assuming text files with custom markup, is there a non-stupid way to do this?
-- 

($_='jjjuuusssttt annootthheer
     pppeeerrrlll haaaccckkeer')=~y/a-z//s;print;

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In reply to Poor Man's XML? by Cody Pendant

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