#!/usr/bin/perl


use warnings;
use strict;

my (@lines,%hash);

open (IN,"<data.txt") or die "cannot open file for reading: $!";
@lines = <IN>;
close (IN) or die "cannot close file: $!";

foreach (@lines)
{
    $_ =~ /(.*)\|(.*)\|/;
    $hash{$1} = $2;
}
[download]

use strict;
use warnings;

#grabs the line splits it into two parts and 
#puts in hash
my %hash = map { (split /\|/,$_)[0,1] } <DATA>;

#print the hash
foreach (keys %hash) { print "$_, $hash{$_}",$/;}

__DATA__
key1|value1|
key2|value2|
key3|value3|

[download]

-enlil

use Data::Dumper;
use strict;

undef $/;
open(FILE, "<", "test.txt");
$_ = <FILE>;
close(FILE);
s/\|\n/\,/g;#may need to modify according to newline on your platform,
+ this is fine with win32
s/\|/=>/g;
my $hash ;
eval("\$hash = {$_}");
print Dumper($hash);
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I feel obliged to point out that this is an insane way to do this. The security implications, the fact that that you have undefed $/ without localization, the fact that you are potentially reading in a huge file to memory all make this a very bad solution.

Sorry.

--- demerphq
my friends call me, usually because I'm late....

Here is a relatively "textbook" solution.

my %hash;
open my $fh,$file or die "$file : $!";
while (<$fh>) {
  my ($key,$value) = split /\|/;
  warn "$_ seems not to be formatted correctly" 
        unless defined($key) and length($key);
  $hash{$key}=$value;
}
[download]

--- demerphq
my friends call me, usually because I'm late....