Actually its a simple hash but not anonymous hash.

I have expanded on Veltro's response.

Given the simple structure provided, I was able to back-engineer the hash. I then used the Data::Dumper->Dump method that allows names to be stored, following the documentation perldoc Data::Dumper.

There are slight differences in the way the storage occurs. The named hash gets stored as a hash, whereas the VAR structures are stored anonymously. Notice the arguments to Data::Dumper->Dump are each in anonymous arrays. You may need to play around with the sigils to the arguments a little to get the desired output.

#!/usr/bin/perl -T
# use v5.22 for <<$datafh>>

use strict;
use warnings;
use feature qw/state/;
use Data::Dumper;

my $data = get_input_data(); 

open my $datafh, '<', \$data
 or die 'not getting it';

my %HASH;

while(my $line = <$datafh> ){   

 state $kv;
 state $current_key;

 chomp($line);

 if( $line =~ s/\A\$VAR\d+\s\=\s(\'|\[)// ){
   $kv = $1;

   if( $kv eq '\'' ){
     $line =~ s/\'\;\Z//;
     $current_key = $line;
   }
   next;
   
 }else{

   next if $line =~ m/\A\s+\]\;\Z/;
   $line =~ s/\A\s+\'(.*)\'\,?\Z/$1/x;
   push @{ $HASH{ $current_key } }, $line;
 }
}

print 'Dumper with VAR',"\n";
print Dumper(\%HASH);

=head output1
$VAR1 = {
          '3|1' => [
                     'user',
                     'user',
                     'user',
                     'admin',
                     'admin',
                     'manager'
                   ],
          '2|7' => [
                     'system'
                   ]
        };
=cut

print 'Dumper with names',"\n";
print Data::Dumper->Dump([\%HASH],[qw(*HASH)]);

=head output2
%HASH = (
          '3|1' => [
                     'user',
                     'user',
                     'user',
                     'admin',
                     'admin',
                     'manager'
                   ],
          '2|7' => [
                     'system'
                   ]
        );
=cut

sub get_input_data{

q{$VAR1 = '3|1';
$VAR2 = [
          'user',
          'user',
          'user',
          'admin',
          'admin',
          'manager'
        ];
$VAR3 = '2|7';
$VAR4 = [
          'system'
        ];
};

}
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fun note: output1 and output2 appear to sort in the same order after a few manual runs, although which key is top is random, they both show keys in same sorting order as each other. Perhaps an internal optimisation?