"WATFOR Forever!" Anyway, I found an interesting pertinent link: http://marine.rutgers.edu/po/tools/perl.html I also played with your code and incorporated it into my mini project:

sub getFortranVarNames {
#
# Purpose: Find all variables in a list of FORTRAN declarations. 
# Preserve any array dimension information as a string for
# later processing. Subroutine is based on response by 
# "Sandy" on perlmonks.org
#
# Return array is further massaged for array dimensions.
    my ($string) = @_;
    my @fields=();
    my $open = 0;
    my $close = 0;
    my $a;
    my $i = 0;
    # \z TRUE at end of string only
    while (not $string =~ /\G\z/gc) {
    # --- get variable name
    # \G TRUE at end-of-match position of prior m//g
    # ?: cluster only parenthesis, no capturing
    # gc - allow continued search after failed /g match
    if ((not $open)
        and ($string =~ /\G(?:\s*|,)(\w+)/gc)) {
        $fields[$i]{name}=$1;
        $fields[$i]{dims}='';
        $opt_debug and print "Name: $1\t";
        $i++;
        # --- find opening brackets, and keep track of level
    } elsif ($string =~ /\G([^\)]*\()/gc) {
        $a = $1;
        $open++;
    }
    # --- find closing brackets, and print info
    elsif (($open) 
           and ($string =~/\G\s*([^\(]*\))/gc)) {
        $opt_debug and print "-> $a$1\n";
        $fields[$i-1]{dims}="$a$1";
        $open--;
    }
    }
    return (@fields);
}
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When I get the whole thing done I may post it.