You're reading your data twice: once into $text and again with a regex. I assume your data is in a file and you've only shown a small portion of it.

Now that you've shown the data structure you're trying to create (in "Re^2: Parse structured text using regex"), I'd probably parse it line-by-line. 

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $parsed = parse(\*DATA);
use Data::Dump;
dd $parsed;

sub parse {
    my ($fh) = @_;
    my ($parsed, $car_key, $model_key);
    my $last_record_only_has_key = 0;
    my $new_model_array = 1;

    while (<$fh>) {
        my ($leader, $info) = /^([A-Z]*)[|]?(\S*)\s*$/;

        if ($leader) {
            if (! $info) {
                $car_key = $model_key if $last_record_only_has_key;
                $car_key = $leader unless $car_key;
                $last_record_only_has_key = 1;
            }

            $model_key = $leader;
            $new_model_array = 1;
            next unless $info;
        }

        $last_record_only_has_key = 0;

        for (split /[|]/ =>$info) {
            my ($key, $value) = split /=/;

            if ($new_model_array) {
                push @{$parsed->{$car_key}}, {$model_key => { $key => 
+$value }};
                $new_model_array = 0;
            }
            else {
                $parsed->{$car_key}[-1]{$model_key}{$key} = $value;
            }
        }
    }

    return $parsed;
}

__DATA__
CAR
MODEL|name=Mustang|Quality=A|Speed=
MODEL|Chevy=Cavalier|MPG=20
MODEL
|Color=blue|type=hatchback|crashrating=spectacular
|explodes=true|speed=|storage=none,little

[download]

Output:

{
  CAR => [
           { MODEL => { name => "Mustang", Quality => "A", Speed => ""
+ } },
           { MODEL => { Chevy => "Cavalier", MPG => 20 } },
           {
             MODEL => {
               Color       => "blue",
               crashrating => "spectacular",
               explodes    => "true",
               speed       => "",
               storage     => "none,little",
               type        => "hatchback",
             },
           },
         ],
}

[download]

-- Ken

In reply to Re: Parse structured text using regex by kcott
in thread Parse structured text using regex by trippledubs

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