hey dogfighter
as u told u r familier with regular expressions so i m giving u a sample for implementing these in vb
use following function
and pass pattern and text to be parsed

vb Code:
  1. Function TestRegExp(sPattern As String, sText As String)
  2.    Dim oRegExp As RegExp
  3.    Dim oMatch As Match
  4.    Dim oMatches As MatchCollection
  5.    Dim sOutput As String
  6.    
  7.    Set oRegExp = New RegExp
  8.    
  9.    oRegExp.Pattern = sPattern
  10.    oRegExp.IgnoreCase = True
  11.    oRegExp.Global = True
  12.    
  13.    If (oRegExp.Test(sText) = True) Then
  14.     Set oMatches = oRegExp.Execute(sText)  
  15.     For Each oMatch In oMatches  
  16.       sOutput = sOutput & "Match found at position "
  17.       sOutput = sOutput & oMatch.FirstIndex & ". Match Value is '"
  18.       sOutput = sOutput & oMatch.Value & "'." & vbCrLf
  19.     Next
  20.    Else
  21.     sOutput = "String Matching Failed"
  22.    End If
  23.    TestRegExp = sOutput
  24. End Function