in reply to Re: Re: Re: parsing text file into a hash?
in thread parsing text file into a hash?

Sorry, I guess I didn't read too closely the first time. at least you got the idea. But if that's what you want, you could do this:
my %names; { my ($label, @names) = split /:/; @{$names{$label}}{qw(first second third fourth)} = @names; }