I wonder if you meant something different from the answers Fletch and imp gave you. Did you perhaps mean, "How can I populate a hash directly from a file of data like that in my OP?" Something like %hash = {some magic here} <FILE>; rather than while(<FILE>){ # do something # $hash{$key} = $value;}. If that was your question the answer is yes and the magic used would be the map function.

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dumper;

my %zipDB =
   map { $_->[0], join q{|}, @{$_}[1 .. 3] }
   map { chomp; [ unpack q{A5 A2 A3 A*}, $_ ] }
   <DATA>;

print Data::Dumper->Dumpxs([\%zipDB], [qw{*zipDB}]);

__END__
00601PR787ADJUNTAS
00602PR787AGUADA
00603PR787AGUADILLA
00604PR787AGUADILLA
00605PR787AGUADILLA
00606PR787MARICAO
00610PR787ANASCO
00611PR787ANGELES
00612PR787ARECIBO
00613PR787ARECIBO

[download]

The output is

%zipDB = (
           '00611' => 'PR|787|ANGELES',
           '00612' => 'PR|787|ARECIBO',
           '00603' => 'PR|787|AGUADILLA',
           '00610' => 'PR|787|ANASCO',
           '00606' => 'PR|787|MARICAO',
           '00601' => 'PR|787|ADJUNTAS',
           '00602' => 'PR|787|AGUADA',
           '00605' => 'PR|787|AGUADILLA',
           '00613' => 'PR|787|ARECIBO',
           '00604' => 'PR|787|AGUADILLA'
         );

[download]

If I have guessed wrong and this isn't what you meant then I hope the post was of interest anyway :)

Cheers,

JohnGG

In reply to Re^3: Odd hash problem by johngg
in thread Odd hash problem by wpahiker

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