$ABCDev=qw/A 1 B 2 C 3/;

Print $ABCDev to see what happened. It was assigned only the 3. The qw operator evaluates to its last element when used in scalar context. You need to learn what a hash is before you can use one. Hashes are a very basic part of Perl and any tutorial or learning book covers them. I think you should read Beginning Perl or something like that. Or at least perlintro.