Added that plug in and ran the code. (I used a majorly slimmed down version of the text file for this example.) Here are the results This is what is in the text file in order:

a
aah
aahed
aahing
aahs
aardvark
aardvarks
aardwolf
ab

This is what Dump returned
$VAR1 = {
' => 1,   'a
' => 1,   'aahed
' => 1,   'aahs
' => 1,   'aardwolf
' => 1,   'aahing
' => 1,   'aardvark
' => 1,   'aardvarks
' => 1,   'ab
' => 1    'aah
        };
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I notice both the vales and the keys are there, however when i do. print "$hashlist{a}\n"; it returns null followed by a \n. they are also out of order, but for the use I have in mind that is unimportant as long as they all read.