[mlacitation]

With regards to the real-time analysis, you might find perl's Regexp::Debugger fun to use:

http://search.cpan.org/~dconway/Regexp-Debugger-0.001011/lib...

That's the documentation for using the module in your code. If you're interested in the standalone tool, you'll want rxrx:

http://search.cpan.org/~dconway/Regexp-Debugger-0.001011/bin...