use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
my %data = map {
		s/#.*//;  # remove comments
		s/^\s+//; # remove leading white space
		s/\s+$//; # remove trailing white space
		m/(.*?)\s*=\s*(.*)/; # split on =, ignoring surrounding spaces
} <DATA>;
print Dumper(%data);

__DATA__
NAME=John Smith
AGE=15
RANK=Tier 1
URL=http://somesite.com