Sounds like you want to lookup the volume for a given slot address and that you want to do that for multiple volumes during the run of the program.

If you have the inventory in a variable: 

my %slot_lkup =
    reverse
    map /^Slot address (\d+).*\n +Volume Tag[ .]+([^\n]+)/s,
    split /(?<=\n)(?! )/,
    $inventory;

...
$slot_lkup{$vol}
...

[download]

If you have the inventory in a file handle: 

my %slot_lkup;
{
    my $slot;
    while (<$fh>) {
        if (/^Slot address (\d+)/) {
            $slot = $1;
        }
        elsif (/^ *Volume Tag[ .]+([^\n]+)/) {
            $slot_lkup{$1} = $slot;
        }
    }
}

...
$slot_lkup{$vol}
...

[download]

In reply to Re^3: loading a hash of hashes from UNIX command output by ikegami
in thread loading a hash of hashes from UNIX command output by novy

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