I have a configuration file that I need to parse through. The lines will follow one of, say, three formats:
Managed Node XYZ123 = MN
Type = Combo
Rim = Planner

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What I need to be able to do is grab any line that starts with "Managed Node" and store the values on either side of the "=" sign in a hash. Simple enough, but I'd like to double check the regex I came up with to see if anything better out there to catch user formatting...differences (i.e. - "a=b" vs "a = b", etc). I'd like to make this as forgiving as possible. On the left side of the "=" sign, numbers, letters, underscores, and dashes. On the right side, I'd like to limit it to a number of possibilities, set in a "|" delimited global variable.
my $options = 'A|B|C|D';
if ($line =~ /^Managed Node ([a-zA-Z0-9_-])\s*=\s*($options)/i) {
     my ($node, $value) = ($1, $2);
}

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The second thing I need to be able to do is two fold. If a line matches ABC = XYZ, I need to be able to grab both sides of the "=" sign and, in this case, create a variable called $ABC and set its value to "XYZ". I'm not sure how to go about dynamically creating variables like this, but here is my regex: 
if ($line =~ /^(\w*)\s*=\s*(\w*)/);

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or would this be better 
if ($line =~ /%(.*)\s*=\s*(.*)/);

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Thanks for the help.

In reply to some regex help by emilford

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