Thanks for the reply's everbody!!!
While I was waiting for some answers I decided to forge on by myself. Obviously the ideas you guys gave me are better, and I will be incorporating them into my current code. For posterity though here is how I worked around:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
my @BROKERS;

open (CONFIG, "ubroker.properties") || die "Can't Open ubroker file: $
+!";

while (<CONFIG>)
  {
    $/="";
    next if /^#/;
    if (/^\[UBroker\.WS\./)
    {
      push (@BROKERS,$_);
    }
  }
#chomp @BROKERS;
@FIRST=split(/\s+/,$BROKERS[1]);
#@SECOND=split(/\s+/,$BROKERS[2]);
#@THIRD=split(/\s+/,$BROKERS[3]);
#@FOURTH=split(/\s+/,$BROKERS[4]);;

foreach $i(@FIRST)
 {
   if ($i =~ /^initialSrvrInstance/i)
     {
       $max= $i;
       print "$max\n";
     }
 }

close (CONFIG) || die "Can't Close ubroker file: $!";
exit 0;
[download]

But like you said I really like the entire hash approach better then what I am doing now!!!
Thanks for the Help!
Pat+