So now I'm puzzling about how to get data from a config file into my programs. Some criteria:

• Configuration data needs to be available to modules and to the actual program
• Minimize the amount of work needed to 'config-ize' a module or program

Note I'm not interested in the actual config data format at this stage, just how to make it available to everything.

My best idea so far is to have a Config package which reads the config file during a class constructer. Then the first time my Config package gets used, the data is read in, otherwise it's unnecessary.

Then, provide Class Methods to get at the config data. Probably simplest is an AUTOLOAD method which looks up the config values from a hash.

Problems I see with this:

• Since there is no explicit construction, how do I tell it that I want a different config file during this run?

OK, so that idea bites pretty hard. Going on with this confessional debugging, lets try mark II:

• Any module/program that might need a config item does something like:

  use Config;
  
  my $config = Config->new();
  
  print "Root path is " . $config->root_path;
  [download]

The key here being that if the Config module already 'knows' that is has an existing config object from a previous call, it will just pass that one back to the caller, so all modules/programs get the same data, and the config file need to be read only once.

In effect, each Config->new() call will merely get back the same reference to the single object, it is held in the Class and only created during the first Config->new call.

The other nice thing about this is that the new method could be modified so a config file override parameter could be passed in. So my user program can use that, and my called modules don't know the difference.

Flaws? Criticism? Pizza?