use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dump qw(dump);
my %hash;
open my $in, '<',"./test_data.txt" or die ("can't open the file:$!\n");
my $data; 
while (<$in>){
    chomp;
    %hash= split (/\s*=\s/);
    #dump \%hash;  #checking on what's being assigned to hash
    }
close $in;
#print "this is the data\n";
dump \%hash;