If you use the wonderful Data::Dumper module, it's very simple to save and restore your data structures from a file. For example:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

our $phash = {
    "enabled" => "true",
    "honorold" => "true",
    "debug" => "false",
    "questsfull" => "false",
    "tooltipshtml" => "true",
    "lite" => "true",
    "scan" => {
        "inventory" => "true",
        "talents" => "true",
        "honor" => "true",
        "reputation" => "true",
        "spells" => "true",
        "pet" => "true",
        "equipment" => "true",
        "professions" => "true",
        "mail" => "true",
        "skills" => "true",
        "quests" => "true",
        "bank" => "true",
    },
    "ver" => "10500",
    "reagenthtml" => "true",
    "talentsfull" => "true",
};

# Save to a file
my $fh;
my $fname = "data.txt";
open($fh, ">", $fname) or die "Cannot write to '$fname' ($!)\n";
my $d = Data::Dumper->new([$phash], ['phash']);
print $fh $d->Dump();
close $fh;
                                                                      
+          
# Time passes ...

# Make the hash null, to verify that it's read from the file correctly
$phash = 0;
printf "Results of hash = %s\n", Dumper($phash);
                                                                      
+        
# Read back the file
do $fname;
printf "Results of hash = %s\n", Dumper($phash);
[download]

Note the usage of our $phash, so that the $phash = ... in the output file will be in the same scope as the version of $phash which is in the script.

I have no idea what a "lua" file is, but ...

Lua is a programming language. I suppose Anonymous Monk means some Lua source file.

Yes.. Lua is a programming language and the variables are stored as tables simular to a perl hash. Thus converting between the Lua table to a perl Hash sould be reather simple with some reformatting.

Well its a start( work in progress ) but thanks for the help guys hopefully, I can get this more generic as I go.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;


my $input;
my %luahash = ();
my @temp;
unless (open (FILE,"CharacterProfiler.lua"))
{
    print "Unable to open file.";
    exit;
}
my@ainput = <FILE>;
close FILE;
$input = join("", @ainput);
$input =~ s/\[\"(\w+)\"\]/\"$1\"/g;
$input =~ s/=/=\>/g;
$input =~ s/(\[)(\d|\d\d)(\])/"$2"/g;
$input =~ s/(\d+|\d+\.\d+),/"$1",/g;
$input =~ s/(\w+) =\> \{/"$1" => \(/g;
$input =~ s/(true|false)/"$1"/ig;
$input =~ s/\}\,\n$/\}/;
$input =~ s/\n\}\n/\n\)\n/g;

@temp = split(/\n\)\n/,$input);
my $inx = 0;
foreach (@temp)
{
    $temp[$inx++] .= "\n)";   
}
$temp[0] =~ s/\"\w+\"\s=\>\s\(/\(/;
%luahash = eval($temp[0]);
print Dumper(%luahash);
[download]

Not exactly a direct solution, but I wrote this to turn Lua (from the same source program as yours, coincidentally :) into YAML.

You can open a pipe from that and then have YAML do the work for you. Zug zug.

Thanks again guys.. here is a working program.. now I can finally access the data easily.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $input;
#my $1i;
my %luahash = ();
my @temp;
unless (open (FILE,"CharacterProfiler.lua"))
{
    print "Unable to open file.";
    exit;
}
my @ainput = <FILE>;
close FILE;
$input = join("", @ainput);
$input =~ s/\[\"(\w+.+)\"\]/\"$1\"/g;
$input =~ s/=/=\>/g;
$input =~ s/(\[)(\d|\d\d)(\])/"$2"/g;
$input =~ s/(\d+|\d+\.\d+),/"$1",/g;
$input =~ s/(\w+) =\>/"$1" =\>/g;
$input =~ s/=\> (true|false)/=\> "$1"/ig;
$input =~ s/\}\,\n$/\}/;
$input =~ s/\n\}\n\"/\n\},\n\"/g;
my $temp = '(' . $input . ')';
%luahash = eval($temp);
exit;
[download]

This is the resulting string shortened (as printed out by perl)

I think you rather mean "as (would be) printed out by Perl's Data::Dumper", In which case it is nearly trivial to make that into a perl structure by simply evaluating the string, although you probably want to get rid of $VAR1 there. Since you explicitly write hash rather than em>hashref, you may want change the outermost curlies into parens as well.

PS: I always say "beware of (string) evals, but this is a situation in which it would definitely be useful. The usual caveat does apply, though.