For some things, it might help to just use a grammar like BNF. These can be much easier to read than regular expressions. A tool such as GoldParser Builder can then convert the grammar into a parser that does the heavy lifting for you.

This link has a few possibilities near the top, plus some discussion.  http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlternativesToRegularExpressions

For some things, it might help to just use a grammar like BNF. These can be much easier to read than regular expressions. A tool such as GoldParser Builder can then convert the grammar into a parser that does the heavy lifting for you.

The BNF, EBNF, etc. grammars can be much easier to read and make than a complicated regular expression. GOLD is one tool for such things.

The c2 wiki link below has a list of possible alternatives which can be googled, with some discussion on them included. It is basically a "see also" link to top off my grammar engine recommendation:

Alternatives To Regular Expressions

Taking "alternative" to mean "semantically equivalent facility with different syntax", there are at least these alternatives to/with RegularExpressions:

• Basic regular expressions
• "Extended" regular expressions
• Perl-compatible regular expressions
• ... and many other variants...
• SNOBOL-style RE syntax (SnobolLanguage, IconLanguage)
• SRE syntax (RE's as EssExpressions)
• different FSM syntaces
• Finite-state intersection grammars (quite expressive)
• ParsingExpressionGrammars, as in OMetaLanguage and LuaLanguage (http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/lpeg/lpeg.html)
• The parse mode of RebolLanguage
• ProbabilityBasedParsing...