"... but since the data in array is a bit like html/xml, I thought someone would write module to do this....."

If @dd was only intended as example data, and your real data is HTML or XML, then there are modules for that (which would probably be a better choice than reinventing the wheel and writing your own parsing code). Try http://search.cpan.org/ and look for modules in the HTML:: or XML:: namespaces.