Your are right! This code works as expected:

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

my (@host, $key, $value, $line, $filename);
my $rec_num = 0;

my $dirname = ".";

opendir( my $dir, $dirname) or die "cant opendir $dirname: $!";
while (defined ($filename = readdir($dir))){
    next unless $filename =~ /\w+\.txt/;
    print "filename: $filename \n";

    my $record = {};

    open( my $fh , "<", $filename);

    while ($line = <$fh>){
        chomp $line;
        next if $line =~ /^$/;
        next if $line =~ /[#{}]/;
        $line =~ /^\s*(\S+)\s*(\S+)/;

        $record->{$1} = $2;

    }
    close($fh);
    push @host, $record;
    $rec_num += 1;

}
closedir($dir);


print Dumper(@host);
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This is the output:

filename: hosts.txt 
filename: hosts1.txt 
$VAR1 = {
          'contacts' => 'helpdesk,admin',
          'display_name' => 'whplnsweb-dr',
          'register' => '1',
          'use' => 'xiwizard_windowsserver_host',
          'hostgroups' => 'AntiVirus',
          'host_name' => 'whplnsweb-dr',
          'address' => '172.28.17.115',
          'alias' => 'whplnsweb-dr'
        };
$VAR2 = {
          'contacts' => 'helpdesk,admin',
          'display_name' => '-------------',
          'register' => '1',
          'use' => 'test1.txt',
          'hostgroups' => 'AntiVirus',
          'host_name' => 'test1.txt',
          'address' => '-------------',
          'alias' => 'test1.txt'
        };
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