well, to get rid of the first element of split, change the block to look like so:

{
    local $/;
    undef $/;
    (undef, @temp) = split /;/, <DATA>; # slurp file
    %sections = map { my($sect, @param) = split /[\n\r\f]+/;($sect, \@
+param) } @temp;
}
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and don't forget to localize $/ !

~Particle