in reply to Using a Regex to parse into keys

To do exactly what you asked for, in a non-flexible way...
#!/usr/bin/perl use Data::Dumper; my $text = join('', <DATA>); my %hash = ($text =~ /(\d+)\~\<font color="(#[0-9A-Fa-f]{6})"\>/g); print Dumper(\%hash); __DATA__ 4~<font color="#FF0000"><b>,</b></font> Some junk 5~<font color="#FF0200"><b>,</b></font> more junk 6~<font color="#FF03 +00"><b>,</b></font>sd 7~<font color="#FF0400"><b>,</b></font> last junk 99 8~<font color="#FF0500"><b>,</b></font>

[TINPC@perlcabal.com shh]$ su real