Assuming I understand your question correctly:

1. Each file contains only 1 line
2. format of the line is: key_a|val_a|key_b|val_b
3. none of the keys or values contain a |

You could use something like:

open(STATS, "/path/to/file") or die "Couldn't open file: $!";
my $line = scalar <STATS>;
chomp $line;
my %file = split /\|/, $line;
close STATS;
[download]

Notes:

• Always remember to check the return value of your system calls like open
• Above code will break if there are an odd number of elements in the line

Update: Changed code to deal with trailing newline. Thanks for pointing it out ihb.

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