#Currently I am creating a key named 'DEF_VAL' and assigning the parent key's value to that.  Any suggestions?

use warnings;
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper loadreg('file.reg');

sub loadreg{
  my $registry;
  open(REGISTRY,'<',shift) or die("Error loading registry: $!\n");
  my @reg = <REGISTRY>;
  close REGISTRY;
  my $head = 0;
  my $section = "";
  for my $line ( @reg ) {
    #if ( $line =~ /^\s?(HKEY.*)\n/ ) {
    if ( $line =~ /^\s?HKEY.*?CurrentVersion\\(.*)\n/ ) {
      # found start of section
      $head = 1;
      my ( $key , $def_val ) = split /=/ , $1;
      $key =~ s/\\/\//g;
      $registry->{$key}{"DEF_VAL"} = $def_val;
      $section = $key;
    } elsif ( $head == 1 and $line =~ /^\n$/ ) {
      $head = 0;
      $section = "";
    } elsif ( $head == 1 and $line =~ /^[a-z]/i ) {
      # this is a key/value line for the current section
      # MaxReferralHops=        0xa;                    REG_DWORD
      # LDAP:=                  dsldap;               REG_SZ
      $line =~ /^([^=:]+)[:=]+\s+([^;]+);\s+([^ ]+)\n$/;
      my $value = $2;
      $value = hex($value) if $value =~ /^0x/;
      $registry->{$section}{$1}{"VALUE"} = $value if $1;
      $registry->{$section}{$1}{"TYPE"} = $3 if $1;
    }
  }
  return($registry);
}