In reference to your update the example posted is already generic and does exactly as you suggest with a minute change. Have a look at the Data::Dumper output. You have a hash of arrays keyed on the HEADER|TITLE|COMPND tokens. Each element in the arrays is the concatenated contiguous lines. You would reference one array like @{$hash{HEADER}} or a single element like $hash{HEADER}->[2] 

my %hash;
my $current_token = '';
$re_types = qr/(HEADER|TITLE|COMPND)/;

while (<DATA>) {
    my ($token, $value ) = $_ =~ m/^$re_types\s+(.*)/;
  next unless $token;
    if ( $token eq $current_token ) {
        ${$hash{$token}}[-1] .= ' ' . $value;
    } 
    else {
        $current_token = $token;
        push @{$hash{$token}}, $value;        
    }
}

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper \%hash;

__DATA__
blah

[download]

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

In reply to Re: An (almost) useful idiom; needs work. by tachyon
in thread An (almost) useful idiom; needs work. by BrowserUk

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