in reply to How to iterate over nested hash and get all paths?

Recursion does seem the natural way to tackle this given the heierachical structure of the data. Find out about recursion with accumulators (if it is new to you).

The following may help (as a last resort)

use JSON::XS; use 5.12.0; use Data::Dump qw(dd); my $j = '{ "/": { "type": "dir", "files": [ { "p": { "type": "dir-link", "sour +ce": "/nfs/data/project", "files": [ { "xa": { "type": "dir", "files" +: [ { "tools": { "type": "dir", "files": [ { "sd": { "type": "dir", " +files": [ { "su2av": { "type": "dir", "files": [ { "duf": { "type": " +dir", "files": [ { "0.4.0": { "type": "dir-link", "source": "/nfs/vsa +/project/xa/vuvua/su2av", "files": [ { "bin": { "type": "dir", "files +": [ { "duf": { "type": "link-file", "source": ".run" } }, { ".run": +{ "type": "file" } } ] } } ] } } ] } } ] } } ] } } ] } } ] } } ] } }, + { "nfs": { "type": "dir", "files": [ { "data": { "type": "dir", "fil +es": [ { "project": { "type": "dir", "files": [] } } ] } }, { "vsa": +{ "type": "dir", "files": [ { "project": { "type": "dir", "files": [ +{ "xa": { "type": "dir", "files": [ { "vuvua": { "type": "dir", "file +s": [ { "su2av": { "type": "dir", "files": [] } } ] } } ] } } ] } } ] + } } ] } } ] } }'; my $obj = decode_json($j); dd $obj; my %special_key = map { $_ => 1 } qw/type files source/; find_paths($obj, []); sub find_paths { my ($x, $paths) = @_; if (ref $x eq 'HASH') { while (my ($k, $v) = each %$x) { if(exists $special_key{$k}) { if($k eq 'files') { find_paths($v, $paths); } elsif( $k eq 'type' && $v eq 'file' ) { say join '/', @$paths; } } else { # a dir or file name # store it and continue find_paths($v, [@$paths, $k]); } } } elsif (ref($x) eq 'ARRAY') { if (scalar @$x > 0) { foreach my $node (@$x) { find_paths($node, $paths); } } else { say join '/', @$paths; } } }