I would have to agree with the suggestions of others to look at existing CPAN modules such as Config::IniFiles and CPAN::General and would like to throw another into the mix - App::Config. This module makes it very easy to not only intergrate configuration files into applications, but also take into account command line arguments which may be passed to override the options in the configuration file.

Additionally, the interface of this module is very easy to use - My only gripe with this interface however, is the requirement to define configuration parameters one line at a time (see the POD documentation for an example of this), an issue which I addressed with my own extension module - Local::Config - an extension to App::Config

 

perl -e 's&&rob@cowsnet.com.au&&&split/[@.]/&&s&.com.&_&&&print'