Perhaps this is what you mean:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
my $index = q{
      1 => 'foo',
      2 => 'bar',
      3 => 'baz',
   };
my %index3 = eval $index;
print Dumper \%index3;
[download]

OUTPUT:

$VAR1 = {
          '1' => 'foo',
          '3' => 'baz',
          '2' => 'bar'
        };
[download]