I like Config::Properties which is very similar to the java.util.Properties class. It allows for reading/writing of a file with the folowing formats:

# This will get ignored
! This will also get ignored
variable1:   /somedirectory

variable2:   /someotherdirectory
variable3 =  /yetanotherdirectory
variable4:   This is a longer than usual \
             property value

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It ignores blank lines and comments, can recognize = or : as a separator, and can deal with multiline properties. It's pretty easy to use, and handles most simple situations well. This would likely be my first choice.

XML is generally not my first choice for config files, but usually the next step once they start to become less simple and my configuration file needs to be able to cope with a complex configuration where a tree might be useful. XML files are easy for a user who is hand-editing to mess up. I'll second GrandFather's recommendation of XML::Simple but only for those cases that I can't address with a simpler solution.

Many of the other configuration file suggestions that I've seen mentioned I might use if I had no control of the configuration file format that I was reading: Unix passwd file formats, Win32 ini files, etc.

Updated: Huh.. Somehow, I missed AppConfig. Nice one, davidrw - I like it. I think between Config::Properties, AppConfig, and XML-Simple those would cover any of my needs

In reply to Re: Config file by rcseege
in thread Config file by cajun

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