omegaweaponZ:

I'd suggest using JSON to parse out JSON items. Be aware, however, that the data you show in your example is not valid JSON. Be sure to arrange with the provider of the so-called JSON to have them correct it. The bits I see wrong are:

• Mismatched curly braces (missing right curly braces)
• Missing quotes on the value for "subject6"
• Superfluous commas

I don't know whether the commas are a problem or not, but the missing curly braces and missing quotes are problematic. Once you fix the data, the JSON package makes parsing trivial:

$ cat t.pl 
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use JSON;

my $text; { local $/;$text= <DATA> };

my $junk = decode_json($text);

print Dumper($junk);

__DATA__
{ "1": { "subject1": "value", "subject2": [ { "subject3": "value", "su
+bject4": "value" } ], "subject5": "value", "subject6": "value", "subj
+ect7": "value" } }

$ perl t.pl
$VAR1 = {
          '1' => {
                   'subject7' => 'value',
                   'subject2' => [
                                   {
                                     'subject4' => 'value',
                                     'subject3' => 'value'
                                   }
                                 ],
                   'subject5' => 'value',
                   'subject1' => 'value',
                   'subject6' => 'value'
                 }
        };
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...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.