First of all follow the wise suggestions of the precise monk afoken.

That said, with the code you posted, and in particular $rec = $1 I get the error Global symbol "$rec" requires explicit package name at pm16012017.pl line 12. but is probably a typo.

In addition i think you just need a hash not a HashOfHash.

Now about your code: if next unless s/^\[(.*?)\]\s*//; is intended to skip the first line must probably be: next if s/^\[(.*?)\]\s*//;

Even with this you get errors about undefined values: Use of uninitialized value in hash element at inifile16012017.pl line 15, foreach line of data and the following datastructure:

$VAR1 = '';
$VAR2 = {
          'FIFTH' => '12345',
          'COMMENT' => '"Perl parsing"',
          'SEVENTH' => 'QWERTY',
          'FOURTH' => '"RANDOM"',
          'SECOND' => '"ID"',
          'FIRST' => '"TEST"',
          'THIRD' => '123',
          'SIXTH' => '6789'
        };
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If you intended to have CELL_NAME as root element you need to not skip the line with it and have $rec declared outside the loop, to have it ad disposal during the loop:

my $rec;
        while ( <$fh> ) {
        if (s/^\[(.*?)\]\s*//){$rec = $1}
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The resulting datastructure (dumped with Data::Dump with dd prettier method) will be:

(
  "CELL_NAME",
  {
    COMMENT => "\"Perl parsing\"",
    FIFTH   => 12345,
    FIRST   => "\"TEST\"",
    FOURTH  => "\"RANDOM\"",
    SECOND  => "\"ID\"",
    SEVENTH => "QWERTY",
    SIXTH   => 6789,
    THIRD   => 123,
  },
)
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L*