You don't have to keep it all in memory. My parser uses just one line of lookahead, you can easily refactor the shift @lines; and $lines[0] into subs that work on a file handle.
{
my $line = <DATA>;
chomp $line;
$line =~ s/^\s+//:
# handles '$lines[0]'
sub peek {
return $line;
}
# handles 'shift @lines'
sub next_line {
my $tmp = $line;
$line = <DATA>;
chomp $line;
$lines =~ s/^\s+//;
return $tmp;
}
# handles boolean check for @lines
sub is_exhausted {
return !defined $line
}
}
I didn't test it, but it should work along these lines.
Instead of nitpicking details, think on the overall architecture and fix small issues for yourself. | 