http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=399803


in reply to Logic trouble parsing a formatted text file into hashes of hashes (of hashes, etc.)

It looks a bit like a tree, with all nodes not starting with ':' being terminal nodes and the other (those with a ':') being non-terminal branches.

I don't think the number of tabs is significant as you have the same information in the '(' and ')'.

I would have a look into CPAN modules which deal with trees.

Another solution might be to transform this structure into XML and then deal with it through all XML-related modules and tools.

A hand crafted XML of (part of) the above structure might read:

<rip> <bind_interface>false</bind_interface> <enable>false</enable> <poison_split_horizon>enable <enable> <poison>false</poison> </enable> <disable>null</disable> </poison_split_horizon> <metric>1</metric> .... </rip>
The trick will be to maintain a stack with the name of the tags you need to close.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law