sub parse_brackets { my @out; foreach my $line ( @_ ) { $line_no ++; $line =~ s/\A\s+//; $line =~ s/\s+\Z//; if ( $line !~ /\S/ ) { next; } elsif ( $line =~ s/\s*\{$// ) { push @out, 'open' => [ split ' ', $line ]; } elsif ( $line eq '}' ) { push @out, 'close' => 1; } else { push @out, 'line' => $line; } } return @out; } sub build_brackets { my @parse; my @stack = \@parse; while ( scalar @_ ) { my ( $type, $value ) = splice( @_, 0, 2 ); if ( $type eq 'open' ) { my %node = ( type => shift(@$value), ( @$value ? ( name => shift(@$value) ) : () ) ); push @{ $stack[0] }, \%node; unshift @stack, do { $node{contents} = [] }; } elsif ( $type eq 'close' ) { shift @stack; scalar @stack or die("Too many right brackets"); } else { push @{ $stack[0] }, $value; } } scalar @stack == 1 or die("Too few right brackets"); return @parse; } use Data::Dumper; print Dumper( build_brackets( parse_brackets( @lines ) ) );