This is how I would do that, with Data::Dumper output for comparison.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

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

open my $fh, '<', $ARGV[0] or die $!;
my @lines = <$fh>;
close $fh;

my %data;

for my $line (@lines) {
    my @fields;
    @fields = split /\s+/, $line;

    $data{$fields[1]}{$fields[0]} = $fields[2];
}


for my $key (keys %data)
{
    print "$key = $data{$key}\n";

    for my $subkey (keys %{$data{$key}}) {
       print "\t$subkey = $data{$key}{$subkey}\n";
    }
}

print Dumper(\%data);
[download]

Here is a sample run and the data.

my@mybox:~/sandbox
$ ./2.pl data.txt
jones = HASH(0x40017524)
        jenny = circle
        ted = circle
knight = HASH(0x4001738c)
        ted = triangle
$VAR1 = {
          'jones' => {
                       'jenny' => 'circle',
                       'ted' => 'circle'
                     },
          'knight' => {
                        'ted' => 'triangle'
                      }
        };
my@mybox:~/sandbox
$ cat data.txt
ted jones square
ted jones circle
ted knight triangle
jenny jones circle
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The key differences from Perl Best Practices :

• Don't use bareword file handles.
• Use the three-argument form of open.
• Use indirect file handles.
• Close file handles explicitly, and as soon as possible.
• Avoid C-style for statements.
• Don't use unnecessary parentheses for builtins and "honorary" builtins.

I did, violate the "Prefer line-based I/O to slurping," rule because we both know the sample data is tiny.

Dear Monk,

Thanks for the reply and suggestions. I have one doubt here. You suggested me to use a 3 argument form of open, but yours and my file open, seem to be the same. Can you please tell me, what exact difference will it make in a 3 argument and a 2 argument file open?

I'm quoting from Perl Best Practices, by Damian Conway, chapter 10, the "Open Cleanly" section.

Using a three-argument open instead ensures that the specified opening mode can never be subverted by bizarre filenames, since the second argument now specifies only the opening mode...

...as a small side-benefit, each open becomes visually more explicit about the intended mode...

Assume that you were asking about the syntax error, it can be fixed this way:

foreach $subkey (keys %{$samplehash{$key}})
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Dear Monk,

When i try to print the key of the first hash, using the following , i get some weird output like HASH(2eASDFS)

 print "\n $key = $samplehash{$key} ";

Can u tell me , what is the wrong with the command $samplehash{$key} ??

Rather than reading all your data into an array and then subsequently processing it, I'd suggest just reading it from the file and processing it line-by-line:

open my $fh, '<', 'sample.data' or die $!;
while (<$fh>) {
    # chomp
    # split
    # assign to hash
}
close $fh;
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Note I've suggested chomp - this will remove newlines which are probably might end up in your hash values after recoding. You haven't shown an example of your input so that's a guess.

Update: The paragraph about chomp was badly phrased - I've reworded it.

this will remove newlines which are probably in your hash values

sundeep is using split /\s+/,$file[$i]; which will remove ALL whitespace so there definitely will not be any newlines in the keys or values.

Thanks for pointing that out. I've reworded the sentence.

-- Ken