# DATA: Start
Graq
Agnostic
Number: 634321
age: 27 hair colour: black
height: 73
weight: 123
legs: 2 arms: 2
jameson
bells
guinness
favourite
detests
likes
# DATA: End
[download]

(Name is Graq, Number is 634321, age 27, jameson is my fave drink, detest bells etc)

Now this data is also surrounded by further noise, and may contain extra blank lines. But the 'Number' tag is unique, and there is always exactly 70 lines of (non-empty) relavent data, so I can index that and grab the lines I need.

# CODE: Start
#!perl -w
use strict;
my $pasteRaw;
while(<STDIN>)
{
   # Remove spaces from before ':' to avoid splitting on 'hair colour'
+.
   substr($_, 0, 1+index($_, ":")) =~ tr/ //d;
   $pasteRaw .= $_;
}

my @pasteSplitAll = split( "[^:] |\n", $pasteRaw ); # [1] See below

# Remove empty parts of the array.
my @pasteNotEmpty = grep { $_ ne "" } @pasteSplitAll;

# Defined an index for splicing later.
my $index = 0;
# Set the index (looking for 'Number')
$pasteNotEmpty[$_] =~ /^Number/ and $index = $_ and last
   for 0..$#pasteNotEmpty;

my @pasteUseful = splice( @pasteNotEmpty, $index-2, 70 );
$pasteUseful[$_] =~ s/^\w+:// for 0..$#pasteUseful;
# CODE: End
[download]

So this gives me an array of 'useful' data. A big thanks to people in CB for some of the individual lines in there, but it is all starting to look a little clumsy (and I am stripping some unwanted values at [1])

So.. to my point. I am looking for some help in handling this data, preferably into a hash, so that I can do stuff with it.

Anything ranging from help on the individual REs to new approaches on tackling the problem as a whole. Am I just kicking a dead horse and might aswell write something a lot less generic?

<a href="http://www.graq.co.uk">Graq</a>