Rather than reading the file line-by-line and so having each logical record spread over multiple array elements; read teh file record by record:

open my $fh, '<', 'theDumpFile' or die $!;

my @code;
{
    local $/ = '</ticket>';
    @code = <$fh>;
}
close $fh;

for my $record ( @code ) {
    my @linesOfRecord = split "\n", $record;
    ...
}
[download]

Depending on how big the file is and how XML compliant it is, you might also want to use one of the XML handling modules like XML::Simple, or XML::LibXML. They can simplfy things so you don't have to write a bunch of regex's to handle the different tags. Some of them are also designed to handle huge files reasonably efficiently

edit:
realized you aren't rewriting so removed that comment

If it's not XML compliant, the XML parsers might fail on you (they're supposed to), but something like HTML::TreeBuilder or HTML::TokeParser might also be convenient. I've used both for what I think is a similar task, and they're pretty straightforward.

more edit
The XML modules or HTML::TreeBuilder will parse things and maintain all the structure that you're otherwise trying to reconstruct out of the array elements, as BrowserUK suggests.

use strict;
use warnings;

my $bad_states = { 'bad' => 1 };

{
    local $/ = '</ticket>';
    my $temp;

    while (<DATA>) {
        if (m/<ticket .*?state="(.*?)"/) {
            next if $bad_states->{$1};
        }
        if (m/<version="(.*?)"/) {
            $temp = $1;
            next if $temp =~ /[^\d\.]/;
        }
        if (m/<task>(.*?)<\/task>/) {
            $temp = $1;
            ### DO SOMETHING WITH TASK VALUE
        }
    }
}


__DATA__
<ticket ... state="bad" ....>
<version="1.23.4.8">
....
<task> ... </task>
....
</ticket>
<ticket ... state="good" ....>
<version="bad">
....
<task> ... </task>
....
</ticket>
<ticket ... state="good" ....>
<version="1.23.4.8">
....
<task>value here</task>
....
</ticket>
[download]

Thanks all but my requirments have now slightly changed. (Issue A) Instead of using a file which contains the datadump, I have to read the data from a url. I'm able to read it line by line but not as an array of multi-line records. This is what I have now:

my $url = "http://.......";
my $user_agent = new LWP::UserAgent;
my $report = $user_agent->get($url);
$report = $report->content;
my @code = split("\n", $report);
[download]

Another problem is that as part of the pattern searching within each record from the content of the url, for <task ... />, I need append it as such <task ... a="123"/> and then return this to the parent record and Print that record. So the Input from the url will look something like:"

<ticket ... state="bad" ....>
<version="1.23.4.8">
....
<task ... />
....
</ticket>
<ticket ... state="good" ....>
<version="bad">
....
<task ... />
....
</ticket>
<ticket ... state="good" ....>
<version="1.12.32.4">
....
<task ... />
....
</ticket>
<ticket ... state="good" ....>
<version="1.1.3.9">
....
<task ... />
<task ... />
<task ... />
....
</ticket>
[download]

So in this case, the output should contain only the last 2 records(tickets) as the first 2 records fail the required conditions and the last 2 records which do pass, process the <task ... > lines and are printed accordingly. Also note that there may be more than 1 <task ... > per record. The Output will be dumped into an xml file and should look like:

<ticket ... state="good" ....>
<version="1.12.32.4">
....
<task ... a="1.1.3"/>
....
</ticket>
<ticket ... state="good" ....>
<version="1.1.3.9">
....
<task ... a="1.2"/>
<task ... a="5.1"/>
<task ... a="8"/>
....
</ticket>
[download]

(Issue B): Curently, I'm able to append a=".." to <task ... a=".."> but when I try to print it as part of the updated parent record, its still prining it as it was in the origanl record.

As you can see, I'm just starting in Perl. Please do help.