I'm not sure if the leading ..'s in your example are supposed to be part of the keyword or not. If not, as your example shows, try this:

#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict ;
use warnings ;

my @str = ( 'fdjsflsdfjk foo=123 sdjflsdfjklsfj  ',
            'sdfhsdfsd  bar=42 fkjfjklsfjs',
            'zoot=23 ff   ',
            '              nooka=9 '
      ) ;

foreach (@str)
{
    /([[:alnum:]]+)=([[:digit:]]{1,3})(.*)$/ ;
    printf "[%s] [%s] [%s]\n", $1, $2, $3 ;
}
[download]

Output:

[foo] [123] [ sdjflsdfjklsfj  ]
[bar] [42] [ fkjfjklsfjs]
[zoot] [23] [ ff   ]
[nooka] [9] [ ]
[download]

Otherwise, if you want to capture the beginning of the string up to the = sign as the keyword regardless of content, maybe this is what you want:

#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict ;
use warnings ;

my @str = ( 'fdjsflsdfjk foo=123 sdjflsdfjklsfj  ',
            'sdfhsdfsd  bar=42 fkjfjklsfjs',
            'zoot=23 ff   ',
            '              nooka=9 '
      ) ;

foreach (@str)
{
    /^([^=]+)=([[:digit:]]{1,3})(.*)$/ ;
    printf "[%s] [%s] [%s]\n", $1, $2, $3 ;
}
[download]

Output:

[fdjsflsdfjk foo] [123] [ sdjflsdfjklsfj  ]
[sdfhsdfsd  bar] [42] [ fkjfjklsfjs]
[zoot] [23] [ ff   ]
[              nooka] [9] [ ]
[download]

Hope that helps. :-)

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