I am a bits and pieces Perl programmer (if I can call myself that). I had a code segment where I was using anon hash. Now I need to move the initialization string to a file. So to build the hash I have to do some processing. Even though, this is weird, I need to ask. Is there a way I can just read a string and initialize a hash with the string directly. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $hash = {'MONTH' => 'January'};
print $hash->{MONTH} . "\n";

my $hashInitStr = "{'MONTH' => 'January'}"; # This would come from a f
+ile
my $hash1 = $hashInitStr;
print $hash1->{MONTH} . "\n"

[download]
I now get 
January
Can't use string ("{'MONTH' => 'January'}") as a HASH ref while "stric
+t refs" in use at ./anonHashfromStr.pl line 9.

[download]

In reply to Initializing an anonymous hash by Anonymous Monk

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.