I can see you are used to shell programming :-)

You're probably better off using an array:

$/ = ":::\n"; # define ::: as paragraph delimiter

open(HOSTDB,"hostdb") or die "cannot open hostdb: $!";
while (<HOSTDB>) {
   chomp;
   push @records,map( { { split/:/ } } split/\n/ );  # updated to make
+ hashrefs....
close HOSTDB;

my $count = 0;
for my $rec (@records) {
   print "record $count\n";
   print "hostname: $rec->{hostname}\n";
   print "ip: $rec->{ip}\n";
   $count++;
}
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Which also eliminates the need for counting the records in advance..

By the way; if you are not using the info anywhere else, you could also just print it as you go, instead of storing the records in the array.

Update: Added extra { } to map.

-- 
Joost       downtime n. The period during which a system
            is error-free and immune from user input.
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