use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
my %hash;
open my $fh, '<', 'hash.txt' or die "Can't open file $!";
while (my $line = <$fh>)
     {
     chomp $line;                  # remove trailing newline
     $line =~ s/^\s+//;            # optional: remove leading whitespace
     $line =~ s/\s+$//;            # optional: remove trailing whitespace
     next unless length($line);    # ignore blank lines
     next if $line =~ /^#/;        # optional: to allow comment lines
     # Format: key whitespace value (value can contain whitespace)
     my ($key, $value) = split ' ', $line, 2;
     defined($value) or die "error: no value for '$key'";
     $hash{$key} = $value;
     }
close $fh;
print Dumper(\%hash);