This is Perl, you can do anything. So desing whatever syntax will be most comfortable to your users. I usualy use %variablename% in config files and templates and so far it worked fine with my users. (As you can guess by now they are all Windows users.)

If you happen to use Config::IniHash you can specify a function to be called for each option read and perform whatever transformations you like. Eg. if you wanted the users to use %foo% if they want to include the "foo" option in the current section and %[sec]foo% to include the "foo" option in the "sec" section. you could do it like this: 

use Config::IniHash qw(ReadINI);

$config = ReadINI('c:\temp\zkINI.ini', systemvars => 0,
    forValue => sub {
        my ($name, $value, $sectionname, $INIhashref) = @_;
        $value =~ s{%(?:\[([^\]%]+)\])?([^%]*)%}{
            if ($2 eq '') {
                '%'
            } elsif ($1 eq '') {
                $INIhashref->{$sectionname}{$2}
            } else {
                $INIhashref->{$1}{$2}
            }
        }ge;
        return $value;
    }
);

use Data::Dumper;

print Dumper($config);

[download]
This of course assumes that you do not try to reference an option that was not yet specified :-)

Jenda
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself
Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home
   -- P. Simon in Mrs. Robinson

In reply to Re: Config files by Jenda
in thread Config files by sparkel

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