FWIW: Here's a cleaned up version of mine, which runs a bit quicker as a consequence. There were several stupidities in the previous version.

Updated Code updated to corrected a major flaw exposed by better testing. Slowed it down a bit, bit not so very much. 

our $re_terminate  = qr[ \s* (?: : | , | $ ) ]x;
our $re_content    = qr[ \s* \( ( [\[\{] ) (.+) [\]\}]\) $re_terminate
+ ]x;
our $re_nested     = qr[ \( .+ \) ]x;
our $re_serial     = qr[ ( \( .+? \) ) $re_terminate ]x;
our $re_qq         = qr' " ( .+?  ) (?!<\\)" 'x;
our $re_csv        = qr[ \G \s* (?: $re_qq | ( $re_nested ) | ( [^\s:,
+]+? ) ) $re_terminate ]x;

sub build_structure{
    warn( "Data didn't match spec.", $_[0] )
    , return undef
        unless $_[0] =~ m[$re_content];

    my ($reftype, $content, $chunk, @bits) = ($1, $2);
    my $p = pos($content);
    while( $content =~ m[$re_csv]gc) {
        $chunk = $1||$3||$2||'0';

        if ($chunk =~ m[^ \( [^\(]+? \) ]x) {
            pos($content) = $p;
            $content =~ m[$re_serial]gc;
            $p = pos($content);
            $chunk = $1;
        }

        push @bits, $chunk =~ m[^\(] 
                        ? build_structure( $chunk ) 
                        : $chunk;

    }
    return $reftype eq '[' ? {@bits} : \@bits;
}

[download]

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

The 7th Rule of perl club is -- pearl clubs are easily damaged. Use a diamond club instead.

In reply to Re: Re: Parsing Text into Arrays.. by BrowserUk
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.