#!/usr/bin/perl -- use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dump; use XML::LibXML 1.94; my $sample = q{

July 12

Tim

Jon

July 13

James

Eric

Jerry

Susie

July 14

Kami

Darryl

}; my $xml = XML::LibXML->load_xml(string => $sample ); my @root; for my $element ( $xml->findnodes("//body/*") ){ if( $element->tagName eq 'h4' ){ pop @root; push @root, {}, $element->textContent; } if( $element->tagName eq 'p' ){ push @{ $root[-2]->{ $root[-1] # key } } , $element->textContent; } } pop @root if not ref $root[-1]; dd \@root; __END__ [ { "July 12" => ["Tim", "Jon"] }, { "July 13" => ["James", "Eric", "Jerry", "Susie"] }, { "July 14" => ["Kami", "Darryl"] }, ]