"... removes all the leading and trailing space ... avoid the "^\s*" repetition ..."

Your posted data had no trailing spaces. In my example code, I did remove all leading spaces for this very reason: "... map /^\s*(.+)$/ ...". Subsequent regexes looked like "/^color ..."; not "/^\s*color ...".

Removal of potential trailing spaces may well be a good idea. I don't know the source of your input, but trailing spaces are often impossible to spot by inspection; e.g.

$ cat > fred
abc
def 

$ cat fred
abc
def 

$ cat -vet fred
abc$
def $
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If you want to do this, you can modify my regex; however, be aware of a subtle gotcha. You cannot simply tag another \s* on the end; you'll also need to change .+ to .+?. Compare these examples:

$ perl -E 'my $x = "  xyz  "; say "|$_|" for map /^\s*(.+)$/, $x'
|xyz  |

$ perl -E 'my $x = "  xyz  "; say "|$_|" for map /^\s*(.+)\s*$/, $x'
|xyz  |

$ perl -E 'my $x = "  xyz  "; say "|$_|" for map /^\s*(.+?)\s*$/, $x'
|xyz|
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