gistfile1.txt

use strict;
use warnings;
use JSON;

## @ARG is a special Perl array that contains the script's command line arguments
my $input = $ARGV[0];

## Our input lines contain two columns, so we should define the variables that correspond to each column
my ($key, $value);

## Open the file, plus some sensible error checking
open(DATAFILE, "$input") || die("Can't open $input:!\n");

## Loop through the file one line at a time

my @objects;
my %hash = ();

while (<DATAFILE>) {
    ## $_ is a special Perl variable containing the current line (in this case)
    chomp;
    if( /^$/ ) {
        if( keys(%hash) )
        {
            push(@objects, \%hash);
            # print("Pushed.\n");
            %hash = ();
        }
    }
    else
    {
        ## Use split() to get the fields. "\t" is the tab character.
        ($key, $value) = split(":", $_);

        $key =~ s/"/\\"/g;
        $value =~ s/"/\\"/g;
        $value =~ s/^\s*//;
        $value =~ s/\s*$//;
        $hash{$key} = $value;

    }
}
if( keys(%hash) )
{
    # print("Pushed (eof.)\n");
    push(@objects, \%hash);
}

my $json_str = encode_json(\@objects);  # This will work now
print "$json_str";