I have occasionally used __DATA__ to hold defaults that will be used in the absence of a config file. It worked out great.

Another strategy is to detect the existance of the config file, and if it doesn't exist, use the contents of __DATA__ to write your default config file. That could be used to create the basic config file in such a way that it is easy to text-edit (and thus to modify) by the person maintaining your scripts installation. The following steps would be taken:

This will leave the config file as an artifact of the script's first run. The user can then customize it without having to sift through your source code, possibly ruining something important. ;)


Dave

In reply to Re: DATA versus config file by davido
in thread DATA versus config file by nimdokk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.