Text::Balanced::extract_bracketed( $str, '[]' );

##</code><code>##

use strict;
use warnings;
use Text::Balanced qw(extract_quotelike);
use Data::Dumper;

sub parse_str
{
	my $str = shift;
	$str =~ s/\A\s*//;
	
	# list-like
	if ($str =~ /\A\s*\[/)
	{
		# eat initial [
		$str =~ s/\A\s*\[\s*//;
		
		my @arr;
		while ($str !~ /\A\s*\]/)
		{
			my ($term, $remainder) = parse_str($str);
			push @arr, $term;
			if ($remainder =~ /\A\s*[,\]]/)
			{
				$str = $remainder;
				$str =~ s/\A\s*,\s*//;
			}
			else
			{
				die "Expected comma; got <<<$remainder>>>";
			}
		}
		
		# eat trailing ]
		$str =~ s/\A\s*\]\s*//;
		
		return \@arr, $str;
	}
	
	# quote-like
	elsif ($str =~ /\A['"]/)
	{
		my ($term, $remainder) = extract_quotelike($str);
		$term =~ s/\A['"]//;
		$term =~ s/['"]\z//;
		return ($term, $remainder);
	}
	
	# number-like or bareword-like
	elsif ($str =~ /\A([\w\.]+)/)
	{
		my $term = $1;
		return ($term, substr($str, length($term)));
	}
	
	die "Expected something else; got <<<$str>>>";
}

print Dumper parse_str <<DATA;
[
	'listliteral',
	[
		'ListLiteral',
		[
			'../classSPL_1_1Operator_1_1Instance_1_1ExpressionTree_1_1ListLiteral.html',
			1,
			'SPL::Operator::Instance::ExpressionTree'
		]
	]
]
DATA