That won't produce quite what he specifies: 
yours makes %names = name => bob => jane
                             joe => sue
                     name2 => john => me
                              oh => my

[download]
but his text seems to say he wants this: 
yours makes %names = name => first => bob 
                             second => jane
                             third => joe 
                             fourth => sue
                     name2 => first => john 
                              second => me
                              third => oh 
                              fourth => my

[download]
if this is really what is wanted, try this slight change: 
use strict;
my %names;

while (<>)
{
  my ($label, $name1, $name2, $name3, $name4) = split /:/;
  $names{$label}{"first"} = {$name1}
  $names{$label}{"second"} = $name2;
  $names{$label}{"third"} = {$name3} 
  $names{$label}{"fourth"} = $name4;
}

[download]
'The fickle fascination of and Everlasting God' - Billy Corgan, The Smashing Pumpkins

In reply to Re: Re: parsing text file into a hash? by Everlasting God
in thread parsing text file into a hash? by ralfthewise

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.