use Data::Dumper;

my $input = <<EOI
a = 1
b = 2
  
c = 3
  
d = 4
EOI
;

# clean empty lines
$input =~ s/^\s*$//mg;

# construct the dictionary from $input
my %dict = split m/\s+=\s+|\n+/, $input;

print Dumper \%dict;