being curious about AnoMonk's unpack suggestion, I hacked the following proof of concept.

(NB: you might need to trim the fields!)

use warnings;
use strict;

use Data::Dump;

my %HoH;
while ( my $line = <DATA> ){
    my %fields;
    my ( $slot, @values ) =  unpack( 'A3A17A16A19', $line );
    @fields{'Description','HW Version','Software Version'} = @values;
    $HoH{$slot}= \%fields;
}

dd \%HoH;

__DATA__
 8 CAM (0D, 12U)    CAM-01122W/K05  CMTS_V07.03.01.39  112 days  2:26:
+10
 9 CAM (0D, 12U)    CAM-01122W/K05  CMTS_V07.03.01.39  112 days  2:26:
+10
10 CAM (16D, 0U)    CAM-20016W/G04  CMTS_V07.03.01.39  112 days  2:29:
+46
11 CAM (16D, 0U)    CAM-20016W/G04  CMTS_V07.03.01.39  112 days  2:30:
+15
[download]

OUTPUT:

edit

introduced temporary @values to "ungolf" code

update

if you have control over the format, you should consider using a good delimiter like "\t;" ¹ instead of fixed length. Otherwise you'll need to fix code at several places each time you a field-length changes. At least the headlines should be aligned and without whitespace to help scanning field width.

¹) or multiple whitespace /\s{3,}/

Does the input actually contain the string "Press <space> to continue, <cr> to single step, ? for help", or is that just from your viewer program?

It looks like the input consists of fixed-width fields. Have a look at Parse::FixedLength, it may already do most of what you need. The classic approach is unpack with the A template. Otherwise, if the input contains variable-length records separated by a special character (such as tab), Text::CSV is the way to go.

I changed the content and inserted a ^ delimiter.

I have this but I don't know how to match the structure:

use Path::Class;
use Data::Dumper;

my $dir = dir("C:\\temp\\");
my $file = $dir->file("hashinput.txt");

my $file_handle = $file->openr();

my %slotHash = ();
while (my $line = $file_handle->getline()){
        if (index($line, "Press", 0) == -1)
        {
            $delimiter = quotemeta("^");
            my @values = split(/$delimiter/, $line);
            
            %slothash = (slot => @values[0] => [type =>  @values[1]]);
            
        }
}

print Dumper(%slothash);
[download]

Really don't know much about hashes.

Hi mtx,

Try to write the hash this way:

 $slotHash{$values[0]} = {
        slotID      => $values[0],
        description => $values[1],
        hwVersion   => $values[2],
        swVersion   => $values[3],
        uptime      => $values[4],
                      };
[download]

If you write to a hash via %hash = ($key => $value);, it'll overwrite the contents of the hash every time. If instead you want to add data to a hash, you need to write $hash{$key} = $value;. Since your output is a hash containing more hashes, this should be very helpful to you: hashes of hashes. By the way, your last line is better written print Dumper(\%slothash);, you'll see the data structure more clearly.