Thank you all for the responses. Off to play with cl-ppcre I go.

I'd been wondering why the ACL regexp engine wasn't more Perlish to 
begin with. :) Are there any disadvantages to using cl-ppcre instead of 
the regular ACL engine?

For completeness sake (completeness for my application, that is), is 
there a portable cl-ODBC engine as well?

-JT