I do something similar with control files. For instance. *process*version : 1.0 *process*tcpPort : 7500 *process*httpPort : 7580 It sounds to me like you would want something like *filename*transferProto : ftp *filename*destMachine : hostname etc. The following code is what was suggested to me for populating the hash

  local $Data::Dump::Purity = 1;
  local(*FILE);
  open (FILE,"$ControlFile") or die print "Could not open control file
+ : $ControlFile\n";

  my %hash;
        # Parse the whole file then later on get vars based
        # on avaible process.
  while( <FILE> ) {
  chomp($_);
                next, if (index($_,'#') >= 0);
                next, if (index($_,'!') >= 0);
   if ( (index($_,$process) >= 0) ) {
    print "$_ \n", if ($verbose);
    my ( $front, $back ) = split /\s*:\s*/;
    $front =~ s/^\*//g;

    my @keys = split /\*/, $front;

    eval( '$hash' . ( join '', map { "{'$_'}" } @keys ) . "=" .  Dumpe
+r  $back );
  }
 }
  close FILE;

        return \%hash;
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