Can your PHP application emit JSON or YAML? If so, that's the easiest approach. Otherwise, you need to write some sort of parser for whatever data structure that string represents in Perl. Data::Dumper produces Perl code that, when evaled, produces a Perl data structure. Your example is not Perl code.

use Data::Dump::Streamer;

my $string;

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp; s/\r//;
    # append a comma to lines not ending in 'Array' or '('
    # or being (other than containing whitespace) empty lines
    $_ .= ',' unless /(Array|\(|^\s*)$/;
    $string .= $_."\n";
}

sub Array {
    my %h;
    while(@_) {
        my ($key) = @{shift(@_)};
        $h {$key}  =  shift(@_);
    }
    \%h;
}
print $string,"\n";

my $ref = eval $string;

Dump $ref;

__DATA__
Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [attrs] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1
                            [value] => -10
                            [options] => 0
                            [type] => 0
                        )
                    [1] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1
                            [value] => -10
                            [options] => 0
                            [type] => 0
                        )

                )

            [mesg_id] => 1
            [parent_id] => 0
            [thread_id] => 1
            [cat_id] => 3
            [folder_id] => 0
            [status] => 4
         )

)
[download]

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [attrs] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1,
                            [value] => -10,
                            [options] => 0,
                            [type] => 0,
                        ),
                    [1] => Array
                        (
                            [key] => rat1,
                            [value] => -10,
                            [options] => 0,
                            [type] => 0,
                        ),

                ),

            [mesg_id] => 1,
            [parent_id] => 0,
            [thread_id] => 1,
            [cat_id] => 3,
            [folder_id] => 0,
            [status] => 4,
         ),

),

$HASH1 = { 0 => {
           attrs     => {
                          0 => {
                                 key     => 'rat1',
                                 options => 0,
                                 type    => 0,
                                 value   => -10
                               },
                          1 => {
                                 key     => 'rat1',
                                 options => 0,
                                 type    => 0,
                                 value   => -10
                               }
                        },
           cat_id    => 3,
           folder_id => 0,
           mesg_id   => 1,
           parent_id => 0,
           status    => 4,
           thread_id => 1
         } };
[download]

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

The problem is that this PHP is not written in Perl. You will need some kind of parser for the subset of PHP which appears in your dumps. I did not find an Inline::PHP on cpan, but that is the kind of thing you will need. Parse::RecDescent may help if you need to write one.

Hi,

As chromatic said, I would also go for YAML or JSON.

Regards,