You might consider writing a parser which is just "good enough" for the files you want to process. Since structures seem to end on line boundaries, you can try something like this: 
my $root = {};
my @stack;
my $object = $root;
use Data::Dumper;

while (<DATA>) {
  if (m{^\s*\/\*}) { next } # assume single line comment
  elsif (m/^\s*END(_OBJECT)?/) {
    $object = pop(@stack);
  } elsif (m/^\s*OBJECT\s*=\s*(\S+)/) {
    my $new = { parent => $object, type = $1 };
    push(@{$object->{children}}, $new);
    push(@stack, $object);
    $object = $new;
  } elsif (m/^\s*(\w+)\s*=\s*(\S*)/) {
    my $property = $1;
    my $value = $2;
    if ($value =~ m/^"/) {
      while ( (($value =~ tr/"//) % 2 != 0) && defined($_ = <DATA>)) {
        s/^\s*//;
        $value .= $_;
      }
    }
    $object->{$property} = $value;
  }
}

print Dumper($root);

[download]
The string literal parsing is admittedly a little cheesy since I don't know what the rules are for representing literals in ODL files.

In reply to Re: Writing an ODL parser? by pc88mxer
in thread Writing an ODL parser? by dHarry

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