in reply to How to find size of each hash of hashes

Record the information as you parse the input:

use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dump; my %volumes; while (<DATA>) { next if ! /^(\w{1})\-(\d{3})\-(\d{1,2})\-(\d{1,2})\s+\((\d+)\)/; ++$volumes{$1}{-chapters} if ! exists $volumes{$1}{$2}; ++$volumes{$1}{-sections} if ! exists $volumes{$1}{$2}{$3}; ++$volumes{$1}{-items} if ! exists $volumes{$1}{$2}{$3}{$4}; $volumes{$1}{$2}{$3}{$4} = $5; } print Data::Dump::dump (\%volumes); __DATA__ B-001-01-01 (2) B-001-01-02 (1) B-001-02-01 (3) B-001-02-02 (4) B-001-02-03 (5) B-002-01-01 (0)

Prints:

{ B => { "-chapters" => 2, "-items" => 6, "-sections" => 3, "001" => { "01" => { "01" => 2, "02" => 1 }, "02" => { "01" => 3, "02" => 4, "03" => 5 }, }, "002" => { "01" => { "01" => 0 } }, }, }
True laziness is hard work