in reply to extracting the key value pairs from a string

my $s = '   ABC: 123 xyz: 100    def: YYY    aaa: ZZZ';;

my %hash = $s =~ m[(\S+)\s*:\s*(\S+)]g;;

print %hash;;
ABC 123 def YYY aaa ZZZ xyz 100

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In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom