The name keys seem redundant to me. If you want to generate a nested hash structure based on the key strings then the following (non-recursive) code may get you started:

use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dump::Streamer; my %hash; while (<DATA>) { chomp; my @elements = split /\s*\/\s*/; next if ! @elements; $hash{$elements[0]} = {} if ! exists $hash{$elements[0]}; my $subHash = $hash{shift @elements}; for (@elements) { $subHash->{$_} = {} unless exists $subHash->{$_}; $subHash = $subHash->{$_}; }; } Dump \%hash; __DATA__ one foo / bar foo / baz foo / qux / two foo / qux / three foo / qux / four five

Prints:

$HASH1 = { five => {}, foo => { bar => {}, baz => {}, qux => { four => {}, three => {}, two => {} } }, one => {} };

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

In reply to Re: Convert delimited string into nested data structure by GrandFather
in thread Convert delimited string into nested data structure by Anonymous Monk

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.