while (<LOGFILE>) {
	my $hit = parse_line($_);
	#do a bunch of stuff with the hashref, like
	# insert it into a DB.
}

sub parse_line {
	my $line = shift;
	if ($line =~ /^(\S+).*?\[(\S+).*?] (\S+) "([^"]+)" (\d+)/) {
                return {host_ip=>$1,
                        timestamp=>$2,
                        vhost=>$3,
                        request=>$4,
                        HTTP_CODE=>$5
                };
	# and some stuff to handle errors, that needn't bother us
}