I second the suggestion of using a prewritten parser. I like Config::IniFiles which parses INI format files like this:

[Linux Today]
url       = http://linuxtoday.org
story_tag = item
title_tag = title
link_tag  = link
refresh   = 1800
[download]

If you really can't use an external module, this format is very simple to parse yourself. It's also easy to understand, and probably familiar to the person following you...

Have fun,
Carl Forde