For you to judge whether this is an improvement ;)

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use List::MoreUtils qw( mesh );

my @users = map {
        { mesh 
                    @{[ qw( login uid gid name home shell ) ]}, 
                    @{[ /^([\-\w]+):x:(\d+):(\d+):([\-\w\s\(\)\,]*):([
+\w\/]+):([\w\/]+)$/ ]} }
} <DATA>;

print Dumper \@users;
__DATA__
hdb:x:1111:2222:hdb:/home/hdb:/bin/bash
[download]

UPDATE: Above is too complicated, look at this:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @users = map { 
  /^([\-\w]+):x:(\d+):(\d+):([\-\w\s\(\)\,]*):([\w\/]+):([\w\/]+)$/;
  { login => $1, uid => $2, gid => $3, name => $4, home => $5, shell =
+> $6 } 
} <DATA>;

print Dumper \@users;
__DATA__
hdb:x:1111:2222:hdb:/home/hdb:/bin/bash
[download]

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