Are you familiar with Text::Balanced? I think you'll find it useful...

As for more general advice, you really should have a specification (rather than a "general idea") of the language you are trying to parse before trying to parse it, even if you just have to recreate it from the sample you've got. It gives you something definite to work with. Otherwise, every time you fix your code for a new example, you'll be unsure of whether it still works on previous examples. If you fix the spec first and then code to it, you won't have that issue.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";