My bad, perils of gut-and-paste. I already found out about chomp being an in-place method and not a result. Point taken on directing open, I will use that.

Problem I have is that the calling script does not reside in /usr/local. It's in the httpd docs directory as a cgi script using CGI.pm. I do a 'require acme;' and then when I try to invoke get_config is when the sadness starts.

I will look into FindBin, that seems promising.

Thanks for the help, I will go forth and attempt to sin no more.