I'm going to assume that everything but the anglebrackets is reliably alphanumeric. I shoved
$inputexample into $_ to unclutter the code.
use strict;
use warnings;
my $templateformat = 'w<NM>b<NM>cm<CH>sw<SW>';
$_ = 'w8b8cm512swno';
my(@values, @names, $val);
# In the example, @h will be ('w', 'NM', 'b', 'NM', 'cm', 'CH', 'sw',
+'SW')
my @h = $templateformat =~ /(\w+)<(\w+)>/g;
for (my $ix=0; $ix + 1 < @h; $ix += 2){
push(@names, $h[$ix +1]);
# Match up to the next piece of template
if($ix + 2 < @h){
($val, $_) = /$h[$ix](.+)($h[$ix +2].+)/ or die 'bad middle'}
# or match to the end if there's no next piece
else{
($val) = /$h[$ix](.+)/ or die 'bad end'};
push(@values, $val)};
local($,, $\ ) = ("\t", "\n");
print(@names);
print(@values);
gives
NM NM CH SW
8 8 512 no
You might want to add more robust error-checking. I could have shoved the push into @values inside the if/else. I'd have saved creating the $val variable but I'd have duplicated the push.
throop