Hi,

I want to extract some part of a pattern that matches my requirement in a string with PERL. A case in point is a string like:
$eqtst="abh nmae res = 10 s abh nmae req = 10 s";
from which I want the words preceding the "=" symbol.
Previously I was assured that there would be only 2 such "=" symbols in a string and so I used sthg like:
$eqtst =~ /\s+(\w+)\s*=.*\s+(\w+)\s*=/
the "()" extracted the words "res", "req" into variables $1, $2 respectively. And life was good .
Now however the number of "=" symbols arent limited (might exceed 2 in a string). How do I go about extracting the words which precede "=" now?

Thanks,
Abhishek