Yes. I have looked. And I asked in the CB and got good answers. As I implied in Re^3: Converting a Flat-File to a Hash, half an hour's research (including consulting the CB) got me a few CPAN modules to look at (about the same list bobf suggested), one of which solved the problem for me.

To an extent the problem is similar to the command line problem, and the answer is similar: go with the prior art. It may not be an exact fit for your initial specification, but over time there are likely to be fewer surprises by adopting standard technique. Certinally there is less learning Yet Another Configuration Technique required if you adopt one technique and use it wherever possible.

Context alters most things of course and there are no hard and fast rules in providing configuration information. It's a whole lot closer to the gray areas than trying to parse HTML with regexen for example. However there is still great virtue in taking a look at the prior art, even if just as a way of sorting out edge cases earlier rather than later and for gaining insight into where your own code may need to evolve. Looking at CPAN to find out how stuff doesn't work and what it doesn't do can be just as rewarding as finding the module that does exactly what you need.