If you're to use Config::Tiny as 1nickt suggested (and I recommend), here's an example on its use.

This is a simple example of a basic config file:

[Database]
enable_replication      = 0
master_locked           = 0
slave_servers           = 0
master_source           = DBI:mysql:name:master.example.com:
master_user             = username
master_pass             = password
test_mode_source        = DBI:SQLite:t/db_test.db

[Logging]
verbose                 = 99
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Code that uses the config:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

use Config::Tiny;

my $file = 'config.conf';

my $config = Config::Tiny->read($file);

# get the master_user for the Database

my $db_user = $config->{Database}{master_user};

print "$db_user\n";

# get the logging level

my $verbose = $config->{Logging}{verbose};

print "$verbose\n";
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With a config parser module, everything is consistent. You don't have to worry about the amount of whitespace on each side of the delimiter (=) or empty lines in the file, and everything is put into a nice clean hash for you.

-stevieb