Question

I want a hash structure, each line starting with a > is the key and the lines up to the next > are the value for that key:

while (<DATA>) {
    $line1 = $_;
    chomp($line1);

    if ($line1 =~ /^>/) {
        while (<DATA>) {
            last if $line1 =~ /^>/;
            $value .= $_;
        }
        $hash{$line1} = $value;
    }
}

foreach my $key(%hash) {
    print "$key :$hash{$key}\n";
}

__DATA__
>label1 
line1\n
line2\n
>label2
line1\n
line2\n

Answer 1

use warnings;
use strict;

my %hash;
my $key;

foreach (<DATA>) {
  chomp; 
  if (/^>(.*)$/) { $key = $1; } 
  else           { $hash{$key} .= $_} 
}

foreach $key(keys %hash) {
  print "$key :$hash{$key}\n";
}

__DATA__
>label1 
line1\n
line2\n
>label2
line1\n
line2\n