To my mind "easy to parse" is not having to write any parsing code at all. That is, use someone else's effort and focus your effort on added value. Anything else is either doing it to learn (laudable), or NIH (not invented here) syndrome (fundamentally bad).

Why not just make your config a perl data structure?

Because parsing Perl in a safe way is hard. You don't want to execute the "rm -rf /" in $config={ foo => `rm -rf /` }.

See also:

• Re^4: how to read conf file in perl script
• Re: What's the right way to include a config file as a .pm bareword?
• Re^2: Storing state of execution
• Re^4: The safety of string eval and block eval.
• Re: Accessing variables in an external hash without eval
• Re^2: conf file in Perl syntax

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

I agree. You'd basically have to rewrite the perl interpreter so that can run a copy of itself as child process in a sandbox and only return a safe, sanitized hashref. To quote RFC1925:

   (5)  It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems
        into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases
        this is a bad idea.
[download]

With enough software engineering, this is certainly possible, at least to a certain extend, but

   (3)  With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is
        not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they
        are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under the
+m
        as they fly overhead.
[download]

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