in reply to multi-line (string doc) parsing

Would help to know if (hopefully) the columns are separated by something other than a bunch of spaces...tab would be convenient. Otherwise I guess you could just split on more than two spaces, but I don't know exactly what the data looks like there.

Anyway, a simple approach: pseudo-codish

foreach (@lines) { next if (/-+/ || /^Sharename/); last if (/^Server/); my @vals = split /\s{2,}/; $hash{"$vals[0]"}{'Type'} = $vals[1]; $hash{"$vals[0]"}{'Comment'} = $vals[2]; }
As usual, untested and mostly not proofread. =) Point out errors as you see fit, of course this is a totally simple method of solving the problem...much cooler solutions abound.

Enjoy

Trinary