A system for generating a parser and using the parser to parse a target file includes a target file description, an output format description, a Parser generator, a Parser, a target file, and a result object. The target file description and the output format description are included in one or more "properties files", which are text files that include one or more name/value pairs ("properties"). The target file description and the output format description are input into the Parser generator, which outputs the Parser. The target file is input into the Parser, which outputs the result object. The target file description specifies one or more parsers and/or tokenizers that can be used to parse the target file. The parsers and/or tokenizers specified by the target file description are part of the generated Parser. These parsers and/or tokenizers make the Parser more flexible, which enables the Parser to parse semi-structured data.