I may be way off target - but if you are coming to Perl from a shell scripting language, you will be happy to know that environment variables are conveniently available from the %ENV hash. Try this out: 
while (my($key,$val) = each %ENV) {
  print "$key => $val\n";
}

[download]
If this is not what you need, then please be more specific.

UPDATE:
The 'HOME' key contains the path to a user's home dir, the 'USERNAME' contains the user's username, but you can't get their password from the EVIRONMENT - that would be BAD BAD BAD! Think about it.

UPDATE2:
If you are looking for a configuration file like perrin suggested below, check out How to assign a variable with a value read from a config file.

jeffa

"You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

In reply to (jeffa) Re: need understanding by jeffa
in thread need understanding by dreman

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