Hi Dan!

Is there currently, or any plans to implement, a way to open files (regular text/ascii files)

There certainly are plans, and they are being implemented (by Martin Robinson mainly and myself)... We hope to have an initial version for release in a month or two.

running a command _and_ capture it's output (it seems that currently, the "system" function only returns an int - which I'm assuming is a return status)

Nothing specifically for this is planned, though it should be possible once I/O is implemented.

or use regular expressions within ChucK.

Some regex-based features are being prototyped... we may see some surface with or after string manipulations (coming up next). Best, Ge!