I'm trying to split header names for colums in a datafile. The issue I encountered was awkward formatting. A simple example of this headerline is: 'Iteration {Applied Field} {Total Energy} Mx'

Each element is separated by \s+. However, if the element contains whitespace, it is surrounded with curly brackets. The two patterns I try to match are '\s+{([\s\w:]+)}\s+' and '\s+([\w:]+)\s+' The latter one sometimes overlaps the first ('{blaa blaa blaa}').

I'm looking for guidance how to improve my current solution: 

use warnings;
use strict;

my $str = 'Iteration {Applied Field}  {Total Energy}    Mx';

while(length($str)>0){
    #print "str:$str:\n";
    if($str =~ m/^({([\s\w:]+)}(\s+)?)/){
        print "1: $2\n";
        $str =~ s/^$1//;
    }
    elsif($str =~ m/^(([\w:]+)(\s+)?)/){
        print "2: $1\n";
        $str =~ s/^$1//;
    }
    else{die "error";}
}

Result:
2: Iteration 
1: Applied Field
1: Total Energy
2: Mx

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i.e. try pattern 1 if it fails, try pattern 2. Then, remove the matching part from the beginning. Is it possible to combine two patterns into normal split function or m/.../g pattern and capture the text from the middle?

In reply to Splitting string using two overlapping patterns by kpr

Title:
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