I would code it in two steps. First, write a parser which parses your (bizarre) config format into a Perl data structure. For you example you might attempt to produce something like: 

my %data = (
  server => {
    "hostname" => "test".
    "console-type" => {
       "type" => "vt100",
    },
    "account root" => {
       "authentication-type" => {
         "password" => q{"bubba"}
        }
    }
);

[download]

Second, write some Perl code that takes your parsed data-structure and outputs the CLI commands. Neither step is completely trivial, but they shouldn't be too hard for a competent programmer. If it were my job I think I'd do the first step with Parse::RecDescent, but if you've never used it before it's probably more trouble than it's worth. Give it a try and post again if you run into trouble.

-sam

In reply to Re: Approach to remove brackets from config by samtregar
in thread Approach to remove brackets from config by ewhitt

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