Thank you. That worked. For clarity here is the final code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

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

getPeople();

sub getPeople {
        my ( $id, $first, $last, $age );
        my $file = 'list.txt';
        my $people;
        my $cntr;
        open( LIST, "< $file" ) or die "Can't open $file : $!";
        #my @lines = split /\n/, $str;
        #foreach my $line (@lines) {
        while (my $row = <LIST> ) {
                $cntr++;
                my ($id, $first, $last, $age ) = split( /\s/, $row );
                $id = (split( /=/, $id ))[1];
                $first = (split( /=/, $first ))[1];
                $last = (split( /=/, $last ))[1];
                $age = (split( /=/, $age ))[1];
                $people -> { "$id" } = {
                                'id' => "$id",
                                'first' => "$first",
                                'last' => "$last",
                                'age' => "$age"
                                };

}
print Dumper($people);
print "The person with ID 3 is $people->{'3'}{'first'} $people->{'3'}{
+'last'}\n";
close LIST;
}
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