use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; my @names = qw(opens first last inc noise min max inc); my $patterns = "1 10 100 10 0 0 0 0#2 10 100 10 1 3 5 2#3 20 100 10 0 3 5 2"; my @data; for my $set (split /#/, $patterns) { my @vals = split /\s+/, $set; my %hash; for my $i (0 .. $#vals) { $hash{$names[$i]} = $vals[$i]; } push @data, \%hash; } print Dumper(\@data); __END__ $VAR1 = [ { 'first' => '10', 'opens' => '1', 'min' => '0', 'inc' => '0', 'max' => '0', 'last' => '100', 'noise' => '0' }, { 'first' => '10', 'opens' => '2', 'min' => '3', 'inc' => '2', 'max' => '5', 'last' => '100', 'noise' => '1' }, { 'first' => '20', 'opens' => '3', 'min' => '3', 'inc' => '2', 'max' => '5', 'last' => '100', 'noise' => '0' } ];