/me forgets the little things sometimes.

I took your advice and reviewed all the links you provided. The real reason I hadn't thought about the config modules in CPAN was because I am using Data::Dumper to create the config file in the first place, also from within the web browser so that I don't have to go and muck with the file at all and I should be relatively guaranteed that it's valid perl (as long as it stays safely out of the evil hands of others). Thus, I figured that reading it in via eval would be a perfectly decent solution.

ALL HAIL BRAK!!!