regexp monks, I can't get my head around this one --

I have an arbitrary string like so

ABCD----[this] fgab [that] BFTE-- [other]
I want to convert this into
%hash = ( ABCD => 'this', fgab => 'that', BFTE => 'other', );

I say "arbitrary" because there are many such strings, and they are all different. The only pattern is that the characters within the square brackets are the values, and the characters to the left of the square brackes are the corresponding keys, except for the silly dashes or spaces in between the key and the value. In other words,

AB CD EF---- [foo]
would be
'AB CD EF' => 'foo',
To make life more interesting, the number of keys and values varies from string to string.

muchas gracias por adelantado.

--
when small people start casting long shadows, it is time to go to bed

In reply to converting an arbitrary string into a hash based on a pattern by punkish

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