a regex question

[Bill Stennett]

Hi All   I'm trying to create a regex to allow me to extract a value from a string composed of name=value pairs seperated by the '&' symbol. The problem I have is that there is no guarantee in which order the name=value pairs will appear - the significance of this being that the final name value pair in the string is NOT followed by the '&' symbol.   Example 1 my $teststr = "VAL1=123&VAL2=456&VAL3=789"; my ($val) = $teststr =~ m/VAL1=(.*?)&/; print $val;   Example 1 correctly prints the value of 'VAL1'   =======   Example 2 my $teststr = "VAL2=456&VAL3=789&VAL1=123"; my ($val) = $teststr =~ m/VAL1=(.*?)&/;   print $val;   Example 2 prints nothing since the 'VAL1=123' name value pair is NOT followed by a '&' symbol.   =======   Can anyone show me how to construct a regex which will match both cases i.e. "VAL1=123&" and "VAL1=123"   Thanks in advance for any help   Bill Stennett