It looks a bit like a tree, with all nodes not starting with ':' being terminal nodes and the other (those with a ':') being non-terminal branches.

I don't think the number of tabs is significant as you have the same information in the '(' and ')'.

I would have a look into CPAN modules which deal with trees.

Another solution might be to transform this structure into XML and then deal with it through all XML-related modules and tools.

A hand crafted XML of (part of) the above structure might read: 

<rip>
    <bind_interface>false</bind_interface>
    <enable>false</enable>
    <poison_split_horizon>enable
        <enable>
            <poison>false</poison>
        </enable>
        <disable>null</disable>
    </poison_split_horizon>
    <metric>1</metric>
      ....
</rip>

[download]
The trick will be to maintain a stack with the name of the tags you need to close.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

In reply to Re: Logic trouble parsing a formatted text file into hashes of hashes (of hashes, etc.) by CountZero
in thread Logic trouble parsing a formatted text file into hashes of hashes (of hashes, etc.) by idnopheq

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