The following code is a slightly more robust version. Note in particular that the result of the open is checked and a three parameter open is used. Note too that the line gets chomped and the format checked (at least a little) and bad input lines rejected. Even then a lot more checking ought to be done (duplicate keys anyone?).

I'd recommend however that you look at some of the configuration options bobf mentioned.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict; use warnings;

my %data;

#open INPUT, '<', $InputFile" or die "Failed to open $InputFile: $!";

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    
    next if ! /(\w+)\s*:\s*(\w+)/;
    $data{$1} = $2;
}

print "$_ => $data{$_}\n" for keys %data;

__DATA__
foo:FOO
bar:BAR

bogus data line - comment maybe?

baz:BAZ
qux:QUX
[download]

Prints:

bar => BAR
baz => BAZ
qux => QUX
foo => FOO
[download]