Ok Monks. Go easy on me here, I'm still a wannabe.

Here's my problem: I want a highly flexible, yet secure way to configure a script. One of the requirements is the ability to assign values to arrays and hashes.

Problem: out of the box modules only (Perl versions 5.005_03 - 5.8.5). No installing YAML, Config::Inifiles, whatever.

Naturally, I've searched here and in The Cookbook for suggestions, and the out-of-the-box requirement pretty much shoots down most of the excellent suggestions found here.

The Cookbook suggests using an actual perl script to set configurable vars and suck it in with do().

I'm sensing all kinds of security concerns going off here if these are user configs, so I've ensured the script is not installed with the stickybit set and required within the script that the config NOT be group or world writeable or executable. I've also used strict in the script, and limited only configurables to "our" scope, all others to "my" scope. Defaults are naturally set prior to doing the config, allowing overrides by the user. Anything that should not be modified by the user is set post config read.

Remembering the out-of-the-box requirement, can anyone point out any false sense of security, unfounded concerns, better ways to handle this, etc.?

Thanks all.

In reply to Configuration files by keyslapper

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