Can you convert the config file to be of the form:

$config{<hostname>} = [ {a => value1, b => value }, {a => value, {b=>v
+alue} ]
[download]

%config = (
   <hostname> => [ {a => value1, b => value }, {a => value, {b=>value}
+ ]
);
[download]

Your config file parser simply creates those variables instead of allowing to query them? To work with this bad design, you'll need to use symbolic references.

my $hostname = 'hosta';
my @host = do { no strict 'refs'; @$hostname };
[download]

Or if a reference is fine:

my $hostname = 'hosta';
my $host = do { no strict 'refs'; \@$hostname };
[download]

Update: I forgot to mention the above only works if @hosta is a package variable, not a my variable.

I did this and it works:

#use strict;

$host = qw(@hosta);
foreach $cnf (eval($host) {
}
[download]

. is there a way to specify it so that I can use strict? Thanks.

Yes. I already provided that. use strict does not give an error with the code in my previous post.

use strict;
use warnings;

# ... Load config file ...

my $hostname = 'hosta';
my @host = do { no strict 'refs'; @$hostname };

foreach my $cnf (@host) {
   ...
}
[download]

By the way, why are you using qw(...) to initialize a scalar. Don't you want
$host = q(...);
or the equivalent but more readable
$host = '...';

See Use strict and warnings for how to properly apply the strict pragma to your code.

use strict;
use warnings;

my @host1 =( {"a" => 1, "b" => "two" }, {"a" => 3, "b" => "four"} );

foreach my $hash (@host1) {
    print "a = " . ${$hash}{"a"} . ", b = " . ${$hash}{"b"} . "\n";
}
[download]