in reply to Getting a hash from a file

You're being bitten by scoping. Try it this way. 

C:\test>type fileWithHash.pl
( fred=>1, bill=>2, Joe=>3, jack=>4 );

C:\test>perl -MData::Dump=pp -Mstrict 
-wle"my %hash = do 'fileWithHash.pl'; pp\%hash"
{ Joe => 3, bill => 2, fred => 1, jack => 4 }

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