use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @items = qw(name passwd uid gid quota comment gcos dir shell expire);
my %user_data;

# Slurp /etc/passwd once and create hash.
# When executed as root, entry 'passwd' will be visible (not 'x').
while ( my @pwdata = getpwent ) {
  my $name = $pwdata[0];
  $user_data{$name} = { map{ $_ => shift @pwdata } @items   };
}
# DONE! The rest is example code.

# see full datastructure
# print "Dump: \n", Dumper(\%user_data), "\n";

# sample output
my $name = 'root';
print "=== $name ===\n";
print Dumper( $user_data{ $name } ),"\n";
print "shell: $user_data{$name}{shell}\n";

__END__

=== root ===
$VAR1 = {
          'quota' => '',
          'uid' => 0,
          'name' => 'root',
          'dir' => '/root',
          'passwd' => 'x',
          'comment' => '',
          'shell' => '/bin/bash',
          'expire' => undef,
          'gid' => 0,
          'gcos' => 'root'
        };

shell: /bin/bash