I’d say julia is the perfect choice in this case - it’s similar to what I do. I can also recommend Think Julia as an introduction - it’s the first thing I suggest for my students - but also given your interests, the DataFrames tutorial will likely be of use.
As to your current off-the-wall issue, depending on the complexity of your regex, you might want to take a look at Automa.jl - it’s meant for building parsers, but it’s got its own regex engine that’s quite fast (though it has some limitations). You might be able to use it for your purpose.
More generally, I’d say that, once you begin to use julia, you may find yourself shedding that sense that you’re not a programmer. Speaking only for myself (I’m a biologist, not a programmer, at least I would have said so 5 years ago when I started down this path), julia and this community have a way of getting you to look at your code differently, and encouraging good coding habits. I will never be a computer scientist the way some in this community are, but I find that an inspiration rather than a barrier.