in reply to returning the hash reference

I can't easily install Config:iniFiles on my Active State machine for testing. You obviously know which sections of the .ini file that you are interested in.

Have you considered using an easier module, say Config::Tiny? If all you need to do is to read the sections and the variables (the most common case), do it an easier way. The module that you have can do a lot of stuff that maybe you don't need?