I got this program to work but it seems like there could be a better way to do this. I have a text file with server host names followed by optional comments. Any suggestions?

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

my %hosts;

#### file format is hostname space optional #'s followed by comment
while(<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    my $host;
    my $comment;
    if(/^\s*(\w+)\s*#+(.*$)/){
        $host = $1;
        $comment = $2;
    }
    elsif(/^\s*(\w+)\s*$/){
        $host = $1;
        $comment = '';
    }
    $hosts{$host} = $comment;
}

print Dumper(\%hosts);

__DATA__
XYZ1ADAIQ1   #AMI
XYZ1ADECQ1   #OAG
XYZ1ADEDQ1  
XYZ1ADEDQ2   ##DMS Host

[download]

The output is:

$VAR1 = {
          'XYZ1ADEDQ1' => '',
          'XYZ1ADECQ1' => 'OAG',
          'XYZ1ADEDQ2' => 'DMS Host',
          'XYZ1ADAIQ1' => 'AMI'
        };

[download]

In reply to capture optional text by Lotus1

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