So, what does file.properties look like? If the file exists but it empty, your script will not produce any output but will not fail either. If the file contains at least one line, your program will output at least one line containing the word "and". Note that the following line implies that you expect more than one key=value pair per line:

    $o{$1}=$2 while m/(\S+)=(\S+)/g;
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Is that really what your configuration file looks like?