use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; chomp( my $inputFile = <> ); open my $inputFH, q{<}, $inputFile or die qq{open: < $inputFile: $!\n}; my %dataItems = map { split } <$inputFH>; close $inputFH or die qq{close: < $inputFile: $!\n}; print Data::Dumper->Dumpxs( [ \ %dataItems ], [ q{*dataItems} ] );