My apologies...I copied my initial before I had changed the code ....however for some reason I get the same error... Here is the code and output ...I appreciate your help.

[/tmp]$ cat first.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

%myHash=();

sub populateHash
{
        my $MY_FILE="file.properties";
        open my $PFILE, '<', $MY_FILE or die "Cannot open '$MY_FILE' $
+!";

        LINE: while (<$PFILE>)
                {
                        # now read the line and remove all white space
+s, tab and new line chars or any trailing spaces
                       $_ =~ s/\s+$//;
                       next LINE if (/^\s*#/); # ignore commented line
+s
                       next LINE if (/^$/);  # ignore null lines

                       my $n=substr($_,0,index($_,'='));
                       my $v=substr($_,index($_,'=')+1);

                       $myHash->{$n}=$v;

                }
        close $PFILE;

}

&populateHash();

while ( my ($key, $value) = each(%myHash) ) {
        print "From myHash --> $key => $value\n";
    }

The OUTPUT is:
================

[/tmp]$ perl first.pl
Global symbol "%myHash" requires explicit package name at first.pl lin
+e 5.
Global symbol "$myHash" requires explicit package name at first.pl lin
+e 22.
Global symbol "%myHash" requires explicit package name at first.pl lin
+e 31.
Execution of first.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
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