As some of you may or may not know, I've written several Perl modules (link below) and posted them on CPAN; I use these modules for parsing various file types. For example, File::ReadEvt is used to parse through Event Log files without using the MS API - this works extremely well for when you've got an Event Log file that you want to parse, and when you try to read it on another Windows system, the error message tells you that it's corrupted. The File::MSWord module is used to extract metadata from Word documents.
Hopefully, you'll find these modules and their associated sample scripts useful. If you have problems or questions, please feel free to contact me at keydet89 at yahoo dot com.
Thanks,
Harlan
CPAN Modules
http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/H/HC/HCARVEY/