I don't know about 'optimal', really. The code you list implies that you can rely on having 4-element rows, so this might be some fun: 

while (<SRC>) {
   $prod{$1} = [$2,$3,$4] if m{(.+?)\|(.+?)\|(.+?)\|(.+)};
}

[download]

Or, another more general approach with regex captures, which works with any data size: 

while (<SRC>) {
   @{ $prod{$1} } = split('\|', $2) if m/^(.+?)\|(.+)/;
}

[download]

Of course, I doubt those are very fast, compared to, say: 

while (<SRC>) {
   my @row = split(/\|/, $_);
   $prod{$row[0]} = \@row[1..$#row]; #using a slice;
}

[download]
<-radiant.matrix->
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In reply to Re: Optimal way to read in pipe delimited files by radiantmatrix
in thread Optimal way to read in pipe delimited files by narashima

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