After some thought, I came up with this not recursive but iterative version, which seems to work... It uses the m//gc and \G regex functionality to walk through the source string... I like this solution, and it should be easily adjusted to use any delimeter...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

($\,$,)=("\n","\t");

use Data::Dumper;

my $string =
    '({ 1, 2, "three", 0, ({ "internal", "array", 0, }) "end", })';
my @array = parse($string);

print Dumper \@array;

sub parse {
    my $source = shift;
    my @result = ();
    my @stack = (\@result);
    {
        if($source=~/\G[\s,]*/gc)        # skip whitespace
            { redo; }                        
        if($source=~/\G\(\{/gc)          # start of a new part
            { push @stack,[]; redo; }  
        my $part;
        if($source=~/\G\}\)/gc)          # this part is done 
            { $part = pop @stack; }                 
        elsif ($source=~/\G"(.*?)"/gc)   # quoted string
            { $part = $1 }                          
        elsif ($source=~/\G(\d+)/gc)     # unquoted decimal
            { $part=$1; }
        elsif (pos($source)==length($source))  # done
            { last; }
        else {                           # something alien
            die "I don't get it at '".
                substr($source,pos($source))."'" 
        }
        my $target = $stack[$#stack];    # where to add part
        push @{$target},$part;           # add it!
        redo;
    }
    return @result;
}

[download]

Update: JamesNC is da man... And I have thick fingers

In reply to Re: Parsing Text into Arrays.. by Gilimanjaro
in thread Parsing Text into Arrays.. by castaway

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.