Hello fellow monks!

I have a complicated parsing to do and got a little stuck here.
I need to parse lines of the following shape:
allow:test1,"@test 2 " deny:test3,test4 password:"123   456"

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and return the hash:
$hash = (
         allow => [test1, "@test 2 "],
         deny  => [test3, test4],
         password => "123   456",
        );

[download]
by the following rules:
1. if after the colon theres a list of comma separated arguments, retrun an array reference as the hash value.
2. if after the colon theres a single argument, return a scalar as the hash value. 3. strings in double quotes are of course count for a single argument.

I had a problem to split by space since I can have a space inside an argument in double qoutes, and spaces can appear in eny place in the argument (an argument can start/end with a space, e.g.: " test 1 2 ").
any help will be appriciated.

Hotshot

In reply to Parsing issue by hotshot

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