Text file to hash table - perl

Question

I want to create a hash table for the data in my file.
The file contains a bunch of commands that are written as
===|showcommand|
Every time I see this delimiter I want to create a hash key and store the data below it as an array in the value until it sees the next delimiter.
The next delimiter will do the same thing which is to create a hash key with the delimiter name and store the data on the next lines following it into an array as a value.

Answer 1

my %commands;
my $name;
my $body;
while (<>) {
if (my ($new_name) = /===\|([^|]*)\|/) {
$commands{$name} = $body if defined($name);
$name = $new_name;
$body = '';
} else {
$body .= $_;
}
}
$commands{$name} = $body if defined($name);
Assumes the body of the command starts on the line after the header, and stop on the line before the one with the next header.

Answer 2

You probably have it already working, but adding a small comment still, regarding the question on how to return the hash from a function.
Here's an example:
Input -file (used the following, which, I think contains similar structure as your input -file.
===|showcommand|
cmd1
cmd2
cmd3
cmd4
===|testcommand|
command1
command2
command3
===|anothercommand|
another1
another2
another3
another4
Perl -script:
use strict;
# Calling ReadCommandFile to build hash.
my %commands = ReadCommandFile("./commands.txt");
# ReadCommandFile - reads commands.txt and builds
# a hash.
sub ReadCommandFile()
{
my $file = shift;
my %hash = ();
my $name;
open(FILE, "<$file");
while(<FILE>)
{
if($_ =~ /===\|(.*)\|/)
{
$name = $1;
$hash{$name} = [];
}
else
{
my $line = $_;
$line =~ s/\n$//;
push(#{$hash{$name}}, $line);
}
}
close(FILE);
return %hash;
}
As a result, you should get the following hash (output from Data::Dumper):
$VAR1 = 'anothercommand';
$VAR2 = [
'another1',
'another2',
'another3',
'another4'
];
$VAR3 = 'showcommand';
$VAR4 = [
'cmd1',
'cmd2',
'cmd3',
'cmd4'
];
$VAR5 = 'testcommand';
$VAR6 = [
'command1',
'command2',
'command3'
];
You can then access individual elements like this:
Get the third command from "showcommand":
print "\nCommand #3: " . $commands{'showcommand'}[2];
Output: cmd3
The data from the file is copied to a hash and the commands are added as an array under the respective keywords.
Thanks!