Seems there are a couple of ways of going about this depending on how much of the whole parsing problem this is. One way is to hand roll a recursive decent parser. Another way is to use Parse::RecDescent to generate the parser for you. If the data you have shown is representative of the worst case problem then hand rolling the parser is probably a reasonable approach. If it gets much more complex than that then using the module to generate a parser is probably a good idea.

You might like to tell us something of the larger picture in case that hints at better ways to solve the larger problem rather than the fine focus on the parsing problem. The best approach to solving the parsing issue may well depend on what you want to do with the parsed result.

Update: as an exercise I wrote the following code that may be a starting point for rolling parser:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dump::Streamer;

my $contents = <<'BLOCK';
create item "xxx" {
  remove entry "xxx"
  add entry "yy" "xxx" {
     item1=xxxx,
     item2=xxxx,
  }
  add diffenent entry "xxx" {
     item1=xxx,
     item2=xxxx,
     item3=xxx
     add subitem {
         item1=xxx,
         item2=xxx,
         item3=xxx
      }
      add subitem {
         item1=xxx,
         item2=xxx,
      }
   }
   another type {
        item1=xxx
   } with "xxx"
 }
BLOCK

my @tokens = split /\s+/, $contents;
my @chunks;

push @chunks, ExtractChunks (\@tokens);
Dump (\@chunks);


sub ExtractChunks {
    my $tokens = shift;
    my @chunks;
    
    while (@$tokens) {
        my $token = shift @$tokens;
        
        if ($token =~ /{/) {
            push @chunks, ExtractChunks ($tokens);
        } elsif ($token =~ /}/) {
            last;
        } else {
            push @chunks, $token;
        }
    }
    
    return \@chunks;
}

[download]

Prints:

$ARRAY1 = [ [
            'create',
            'item',
            '"xxx"',
            [
              'remove',
              'entry',
              '"xxx"',
              'add',
              'entry',
              '"yy"',
              '"xxx"',
              [
                'item1=xxxx,',
                'item2=xxxx,'
              ],
              'add',
              'diffenent',
              'entry',
              '"xxx"',
              [
                'item1=xxx,',
                'item2=xxxx,',
                'item3=xxx',
                'add',
                'subitem',
                [
                  'item1=xxx,',
                  'item2=xxx,',
                  'item3=xxx'
                ],
                'add',
                'subitem',
                [
                  'item1=xxx,',
                  'item2=xxx,'
                ]
              ],
              'another',
              'type',
              [ 'item1=xxx' ],
              'with',
              '"xxx"'
            ]
          ] ];

[download]
DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

In reply to Re: Parsing balanced parentheses by GrandFather
in thread Parsing balanced parentheses by budman

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.