Or this? 
my $s = '   ABC: 123 xyz: 100    def: YYY    aaa: ZZZ';
my %hash;

for (split /[^:]\s+/, $s) {
    my ($key, $val) = split /:\s*/;
    next unless $key;
    $hash{$key} = $val;
}

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In reply to Re: extracting the key value pairs from a string by philipbailey
in thread extracting the key value pairs from a string by mnranjeeth

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