sub loadtextconfig {

        # Read a text-based config file into a single-level hash, die on disk error
        # Usage: loadtextconfig(\%myhash, $myfilename);
        # Note: SJIS CAN BREAK/bakemoji e.g. a comma separated list of prefectures
        # Copyright 2001-2004 (c) Matt Rosin

        my ($href,$f)   = @_;
        my ($i,$j)              = (0,0);

        open(W,$f) || die  "Content-type: text/html\n\n ERROR: Could not open $f $!";
        while (<W>) {
                next if /^#/;                           # ignore commented lines
                $_ =~ s/\r|\n//g;                       # remove ending carriage return and/or ne
wline
                s/^\s+//;                               # remove leading whitespace
                s/\s+$//g;                              # remove trailing whitespace
                next unless length;                     # skip blank lines

                ($i,$j) = split(/\t/,$_,2);             # $j holds rest of line
                $j = "" unless (defined $j);
                $j =~ s/^\s+//;                         # remove leading whitespace
                $href->{$i} = $j;
        }
        close(W);

        # print "loadtextconfig $f: <PRE>\n" . Dumper($href) . "</PRE>\n";
}