my $cChipId; my $cSubVersId; my %data_ids; my $readline; if(open (my $CFILE,"config.txt" ) || die "couldnt open file:", $! ) { while ($readline = <$CFILE>) { chomp $readline; my ($key , $value) = (split /::/, $readline); $data_ids{$key} = $value;**** } for my $key (keys %data_ids) { $cChipId = $data_ids{'chipid'}; $cSubVersId = $data_ids{'subversid'}; } }