The lesson we learned is that sometimes getting back to the roots (AWK) and using simple methods (regex) can be extremely effective. You are of course right that "what I can't do no-one can" is a bad thing.
IMO your lesson is to get to define a problem simply enough that you can apply a simple solution. This is not a given and usually needs serious design and project management skills.
Otherwise even your simple solution would be drawn in "can you support multi-byte characters ? Do you handle non unicode stuff ? What if it leaks in your layers if code before reaching your awk library ?" and other problems that abound in most mildy complex projects.
Otherwise even your simple solution would be drawn in "can you support multi-byte characters ? Do you handle non unicode stuff ? What if it leaks in your layers if code before reaching your awk library ?" and other problems that abound in most mildy complex projects.