>perl -wMstrict -le "my $s = '1 human 2 flower 3 fruits 5 human 6 car 9 flower asdgjhashdnh gsdh sjs klja'; my %hash = $s =~ m{ (\d) \s+ ([[:alpha:]]+) }xmsg; use Data::Dumper; print Dumper \%hash; " $VAR1 = { '6' => 'car', '1' => 'human', '3' => 'fruits', '9' => 'flower', '2' => 'flower', '5' => 'human' };