in reply to Read from a header file like C

You can do that with a suprisingly small amount of code. What I use is a hash ref to store the variables, 
sub getEnv {
   my $file = shift(@_);
   my $ref  = shift(@_);
   unless (-f $file) {
      print "Could not find $file.\n";
      exit(1);
   }

   open (FILE, "< $file");

   while (<FILE>) {
     chomp;
     next if /^\s*\#/;
     next unless /=/;
     my ($key, $variable) = split(/=/,$_,2);
     $variable =~ s/\s+//g;
     $key      =~ s/\s+//g;
     $ref->{config}->{$key} = $variable;
   }
   close FILE;
}

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Config File 
port=100
host=some.host.com

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"We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky – and it would be so much less fun if we were. There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours." Jean Rhys (1890-1979)

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom