use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my @input = ( 'foo:' => 1, 'bar:' => 2, 'baz', # no colon, so value is "1" 'quux:' => 3, ); my %output; while (@input) { my $key = shift @input; if ($key =~ /\A(.+):\z/) { $output{$1} = shift @input; } else { $output{$key} = 1; } } print Dumper \%output;