use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my $data="key1=value1 key2=value2 value3 key3=value4 value5 value6 key4=value7 key5=value8 key6=value9 value10"; # Albannach version my %hash; while ($data =~ /(\w+=)((\w+( |$)+)+)/g) { $hash{$1} = $2; } print Dumper \%hash; # gumpu version: my %foo; while ($data =~ m/(\S+)=(\S+($|([^=]+\s+)+))/g) { $foo{$1}=$2; } print Dumper \%foo;