Nice. Thank you.
That's because using split there will always be an implied empty field preceding the first tag.
Yes, I have re-learned that many times.

Would it be OK if I up the ante a bit? The tags are really not so well structured. They are things like HOSTNAME, CONTACT, .... And my mojo ain't workin' quite well enough to see how to adapt your solution to 10-15 tags of that ilk (at least I don't see how to do it in a nice, tidy way).

In reply to Re^2: problems splitting ugly input data by Anonymous Monk
in thread problems splitting ugly input data by Anonymous Monk

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