Make that split(/=/, $pair, 2) and your values will be allowed to have equals signs.

For most casual applications, I usually use split(/\s*=\s*/, $pair, 2). I like spaces. I'd do the same for the semicolon split. But considering the comment (this is from a serialized db row), I doubt there's much point.

To be more robust (specifically: to allow arbitrary characters in the names and values), I agree with the suggestions to use URI escaping. Since you're programmatically generating the data you're parsing, there's no reason not to do the job right -- your first concern should be correctness, second should be basic human readability (so you can tell what's going on), and a very distant third should be human writability (for debugging, casual testing, off-the-cuff model manipulation, etc.)


In reply to Re^2: clean code by sfink
in thread clean code by rsiedl

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.