use strict; use warnings; my %hash; my $key; while () { if (/object-group\s+(\w+)\s+(.*)/) { $key = $2; $hash{$key}{type} = $1; } elsif (/\Q$hash{$key}{type}\E-object\s+(.*)/) { push @{$hash{$key}{array_of_entries}}, $1; } } use Data::Dumper; print Dumper(\%hash); __DATA__ object-group service DM_SERVICE_7 service-object tcp eq 1433 service-object tcp eq 49160 service-object tcp eq 8086 object-group network Employees description Employees network-object 10.10.12.0 255.255.255.0 network-object 10.11.12.0 255.255.255.0