Which is quite clever since keys must be strings. =)

May I propose to put the delimiter at the end (splitting ignores by defaults empty fields at the end) ...

  DB<101> split /\|/, 'a|b|c|'
 => ("a", "b", "c")

  DB<102> split /\|/, '|a|b|c'
 => ("", "a", "b", "c")
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and to chose something less vulnerable like "\0" or "$;" as delimiter?