in reply to newb regular expression question

Don't use a regex. Parse the file line by line.
my %leases; my $curr_lease; while (<FH>) { # We're done with the current lease if (/}/) { $curr_lease = ''; } elsif (/^lease (\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})/ { $current_lease = $1; $leases{$current_lease} = {}; } elsif (/^\s+(starts|ends) (\d) (\d(4)\/\d{2}\/\d{2}) (\d{2}:\d{2}: +\d{2})/) { $leases{$current_lease}{$1} = { num => $2, date => $3, time => $4, }; } elsif (/^\s+(hardware) (\w+) ([^;]+)/) { $leases{$current_lease}{$1} = { type => $2, id => $3, }; } elsif ((my @vals = split) == 2) { $leases{$current_lease}{$vals[0]} = $vals[1]; } else { chomp; print "I don't know what to do with '$_'\n"; } }
Now, you have all the leases in %leases, keyed by IP number. :-)

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.