in reply to Some assistance with splitting variables

Or like this:

use strict; use warnings; my $line="19476 2013-04-05,12:10:51.909293 host:internal.machine44.com +pany.net main INFO Running normally with ACTION=<processing> FAN_A=<O +K> FAN_B=<OK> SEND=<Sent mail (221 2.0.0 Service closing transmission + channel)> FAILURE=<2>"; $line =~ s/\d+ (.*?) /DATE=<$1> /; # to give you the date as well ;) my %info = $line =~ /(\w+)=<(.*?)>/g; print "$_:$info{$_}\n" for keys %info;

UPDATE: Added the date field...