while ($line = <>) {
  my ($k, $v) = split /\s*=\s*/, $line, 2;
  $values{$k} = $v;
}
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Your code got a little mangled in the HTML (use <code> tags next time).

I'm using split because what's before and after the = (and any surrounding whitespace) is irrelevant to the pattern -- what you really want to look for is that delimiter. split is natural for this job.

hdp.