#!/usr/bin/perl -ws use Parse::RecDescent; use Data::Dumper; use Parse::RecDescent; my $grammar = <<'EOGRAMMAR'; { my %patterns; } query: { %patterns=() } pattern(s) end_of_query { $return = { %patterns } } | end_of_query: /\Z/ pattern: '+' string { push @{$patterns{required}}, $item[2] } | '-' string { push @{$patterns{excluded}}, $item[2] } | string { push @{$patterns{optional}}, $item[1] } | string: quoted_string | bareword quoted_string: { my $string = extract_delimited($text,q{'"}); $return = substr($string,1,length($string)-2) if $string; } bareword: /\w+/ EOGRAMMAR my $parser = Parse::RecDescent->new($grammar) or die; while (<>) { my $query = $parser->query($_); print Data::Dumper->Dump([$query],['query']); }