Just to give an example of lhowards idea...

use Data::Dumper;

my %hash1 = (
             one => 1,
             two => 2,
             thr => 3,
            );

# You would write Dumper(\%hash1) to a file...
# then read into scalar e.g. $var .= $_ while <>;
my $var = Dumper \%hash1;

my $VAR1; # This shut's up -w/strict ;-)

my %hash2 = %{eval $var};

# %hash2 now equals %hash1!

--
Casey