First things first: the line split (/"/,$line) by itself doesn't do much. split returns a list, so you should do something like

That gives you 'type=','car','make=' etc...

Not what you wanted? Thought so. In order to also strip the "="-signs, you'll want to add them to the regex in the split:

Added bonus: If you then do my %hash = (@elements);, you get a nice little hash:

%hash = { type    => 'car',
                ofmake  => 'Ford',
                color   => 'red'};
[download]

Hope that helps,
BrotherAde

The hash assignment is clever, and it works in this case, but if you run under -w (and I hope you do!) and the line you are processing happens not to end with a " then there will be an odd number of elements in the elements array (the last element of the array will be the text after the last attribute), and you will get a warning Odd number of elements in hash assignment at....

--
mirod
The Error Message is GOD - MJD

split will return not only the values within the quotes but also what's outside of them.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict; 

while( <DATA>)
  { chomp;
    my @atts= (m{=                  # an equal sign
                  \s*               # optional spaces
                     "              # a double quote
                      ([^"]*)       # capture while no double quote
                             "      # the closing double quote
                              }gx);

    print "$_: ", join( "-", @atts), "\n";
  }

__DATA__
type="car" of make="Ford" color="red"
type="car" of make="Ford" color="red" foo
foo= type="car" of make="Ford" color="red" foo
foo= type="car=" of make="Ford" color="red" foo
[download]

my($type,$make,$color)=$line=~/"([^"]*)"/g;
[download]

my($type,$make,$color)=$line=~/"((?:[^"\\]*|\\"?)*)"/g;
[download]

That's a task for Regexp::Common.

    use Regexp::Common;
    print "$3\n" while 'type="car" of make="Ford" color="red"' =~ 
                        /$RE{delimited}{-delim => '"'}{-keep}/g;
    __END__
    car
    Ford
    red
[download]

--dda