my $fontline = "font-family: Verdana, Arial, Geneva, san-serif; font-s
+ize: .69em; color: #666666";

my @components = split /[:;]\s+/, $fontline;

print join "\n", "", @components, "";

print "\n or, as a hash:\n";

%components = @components;

print "$_ => $components{$_}\n" for ( keys %components );

__OUTPUT__

font-family
Verdana, Arial, Geneva, san-serif
font-size
.69em
color
#666666

 or, as a hash:
font-family => Verdana, Arial, Geneva, san-serif
font-size => .69em
color => #666666
[download]

Have you thought about using split

# for example:
use strict;
use warnings;
my $CSS = "";
my $filename = shift (@ARGV) || die ("No file in \@ARGV!");
open ("FILE", "< $filename")
  or die ("Cannot open $filename $!");
$CSS .= $_ while (<FILE>);
close ("FILE")
  or die ("Cannot close $filename $!");

# CSS is of the form:
# H1 { /* CSS */ }
# where H1 is the HTML element
# what's in {} is what to do
# and /* */ is comments
# so get rid of comments

$CSS =~ s[/\*.*?\*/][]sg;

# now get what's in between the {}s

my @parts = split /\}/, $CSS;
while (@parts) {
  my $part = shift (@parts);
  # now we should have CSS of the form
  # H1 { directives
  my ($HTML_element, $CSS) = split /\{/, $part, 2;
  # note that the HTML element we're working on is in
  # $HTML_element
  # now get the CSS directives
  my @directives = split ';', $CSS;
  # now each CSS directive i.e.
  # font-family: Verdana, Arial, Geneva
  # has been brokon off
  foreach my $directive (@directives) {
    my @parts = split ':', $directive;
    # $parts[0] is font-family
    my @fonts = split ',', $parts[0];
    # @fonts is all the different font families
  }
}
[download]

You'll note I did what I did because CSS states that there's a : after a property, i.e. font-family and that there are commas between different options. In any event, why not go to CPAN and pick up a ready made CSS parser? What I did was just a quick hack, and although it should give you some direction on what you can do, it almost certainly won't work nearly as well as a CPAN module -- of which there are many.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my %data = split(/[:;]/, 'font-family: Verdana, Arial, Geneva, san-ser
+if; font-size: .69em; color: #666666');

use Data::Dumper;

print STDERR Dumper(\%data);
[download]

$VAR1 = {
          'font-family' => ' Verdana, Arial, Geneva, san-serif',
          ' color' => ' #666666',
          ' font-size' => ' .69em'
        };
[download]

package CSS::Adaptor::XML;

$VERSION = 1.00;

use CSS::Adaptor;
@ISA = ('CSS::Adaptor');

use strict;
use warnings;

sub output_rule {
    my ($self, $rule) = @_;
    
    #loop on each selector
    foreach ($rule->selectors(@_)){
        
        #grab the selector name
        my $selector = $rule->selectors;
        print "\t\<style name=\"".$selector."\"\>\n";
        
        #loop on each selector's properties
        foreach ($rule->properties(@_)){
            my @properties = $rule->properties;
            
            foreach my $line (@properties){
                my %properties = split (/[:;]\s+/,$line);
                print "\t\t\<property name=\"".$_."\"\>".$properties{$
+_}."\<\\property\>\n" for ( keys %properties  );
            }
        }
        #closing style
        print "\t\<\\style\>\n";
    }
}

1;

__END__
[download]

my $css = CSS->new ({'adaptor' => 'CSS::Adaptor::XML'});
    $css->read_string($css-passed-as-string);
    print $css->output();
    $css->purge();
[download]