note philiprbrenan <p>Taking things one step further: </p> <code> use feature ":5.14"; use warnings FATAL => qw(all); use strict; use Data::Dump qw(dump pp); my @d = split /\n/, <<'END'; O59734 | Name=smf1; ORFNames=SPBC3E7.14, SPBC4F6.01 Q97W02 | Name=dbh; Synonyms=dpo4; OrderedLocusNames=SSO2448 B0JTM2 | Name=trpC; OrderedLocusNames=MAE_45030 Q0WVE9; Q5XF02; Q9ZVN7 | OrderedLocusNames=At1g05030; ORFNames=T7A14.10 Q15X31 | Name=rraB; OrderedLocusNames=Patl_1031 Q66640 | Name=36 Q9F2S0 | Name=hemL; OrderedLocusNames=SCO4469; ORFNames=SCD65.12 A9R5H1 | Name=dctA; OrderedLocusNames=YpAngola_A4067 Q7N3W0 | Name=rnt; OrderedLocusNames=plu2603 Q6GNW0 | Name=lrrfip2 Q4L4T4 | OrderedLocusNames=SH2032 B7I359 | Name=rplL; OrderedLocusNames=AB57_0368 B2HII2 | Name=leuD; OrderedLocusNames=MMAR_1727 END my $D; for(@d) {my ($c, $d) = split /\s+\|\s+/; for(split /;\s+/, $d) {my ($k, $v) = split /=/; $D->{$_}{$k} = $v for split /;\s+/, $c; } } say $D->{Q9ZVN7}{ORFNames}; say $D->{B2HII2}{Name}; </code> <p>Produces</p> <code> T7A14.10 leuD </code> 991278 991324