Yes indeed after looking at storable it looks as a much more suitable solution as the files only have to be used in Perl. However when looking at the function of storage it will store a Hash table into a file but it restores it into a scalar. I have been unable to get it back into a hash table.

my %stages;
$stages{job_choice}->{status}->{val}="";
$stages{job_choice}->{param_gui}->{val}="job_choice_gui.pl";
$stages{input}->{status}->{val}="";

use Storable;
store \%stages, 'stages.test';
my $hashref = retrieve('stages.test'); # not good : result is a scalar
my %hashref1 = %{do retrieve('stages.test')}; # This does the job but 
+it reports an error message.
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I have found the solution. They should actually add this to the storable documentation.

my %hashref = %{retrieve('stages.test')};
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