Two nits: Why use splice @lines, 0, 1; instead of shift, and why use split /\s+/ when split ' ' does the same thing but discards leading whitespace? splice @elements, 0, 1; discards the first element regardless of what it contains, even if the file format changes and there is no more whitespace at the front of the lines.

Hello haukex,

Yes you are right, I was not thinking clearly on that day and I made the code more complex without any reason :).

Thanks for pointing out minor possible improvements.

BR / Thanos

Seeking for Perl wisdom...on the process of learning...not there...yet!

Hi thanos1983,The code which was shared by you absolutely brilliant piece of code and helped me a lot but what if there is a bit change in the text file mentioned below input file.I have tried but i am getting the output as {''=>[],Apple =>[A,40,45,50,54]} with first line empty and actual data is starting after the comma seperation & A in displaying in an array actually it has to dispay as {Apple-A =>[40,45,50,54]} .Any help is appreciated

Below is the code used to achieve the output

use strict;
use warnings;

use IO::All;
use Data::Dumper;
my @elements =();
my @lines = io('test_scores.txt')->chomp->slurp;
splice @lines, 0, 1; # remove first line

my %hash;

foreach my $line (@lines) {
    $line =~ s/^\s+//;
    my @elements = split /\s+/, $line;
    $hash{splice @elements, 0, 1} = \@elements;    
}
print Dumper \%hash;
[download]

below is the Input file

fruit    Jan feb mar apr
Apple A  40  45  50  54
orange O 12  25  24  29
Pineapple P 10 20 30 40
[download]

output should be as below

Make the key by joining the first 2 fields. see splice and join

foreach my $line (@lines) {
    $line =~ s/^\s+//;
    my @elements = split /\s+/, $line;
    my $key = join '-',splice @elements, 0, 2; # 2 col key 
    $hash{$key} = \@elements if length($key) > 0; # no blank keys   
}
[download]

poj

Hi Poj your code has worked for me,thank you so much but actually in the output i am gettingvar$1={'apple-A'=>['30','40','50','60']}

How to get rid of the single quotes for the values 30,40,50,60

input file data

name jan feb mar apr
apple 30 40 50 60
orange 25 54 45 45
[download]

Please find the code below

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use IO::All;
use Data::Dumper;

my @lines = io('test_Scores.txt')->chomp->slurp;
splice @lines, 0, 1; # remove first line

my %hash;
foreach my $line (@lines) {
    $line =~ s/^\s+//;
    my @elements = split /\s+/, $line;  
     my $key = join '-',splice @elements, 0, 2;      
    $hash{$key} = \@elements if length($key) > 0; 
   
}
print Dumper \%hash;
[download]

The code you posted in the root node works for this case...