or download this
>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $input1 = 'a=1 gibberish b=2 c=3';
...
Using regex ^(?<a>a=(\d)).*?(?<b>b=(\d))?(?<gib>.*?)(?<c>c=(\d))$
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at ...
a 'a=1' b '' c 'c=3' gib ' gibberish b=2 '