I don't think that will work correctly if the last character of the key is an escaped backslash. That is, 
my $string = 'a\\\\:b:c';

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The key should be 'a\' and the value 'b:c' (after removing escapes), but you'll end up with 'a\:b' and 'c'.

In reply to Re^2: Handling escapes while splitting lines by Eimi Metamorphoumai
in thread Handling escapes while splitting lines by mikecarlton

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