Parse::CSV would really fit the bill, I even demonstrated using a pipe sep over here.

But if you're stuck without using modules, you could probably rig sub up to do what you want easily. This just reads a text file of values in the form of:

some_key_param=value
[download]

my $config = read_config({ filename => 'some_config_file' });

# {{{ read_config
#

sub read_config {

    my $args = shift;

    die "No configuration file specified\n"
        unless defined $args->{filename};

    open my $conf_fh, '<', $args->{filename}
        or die "Error opening conf file...$!\n\n";

    my $conf = {};

    for (<$conf_fh>) {

        chomp;
        
        # use '=' as the separator
        if ( $_ =~ m/[=]/ ) {

            # skip these lines
            s/#.*//;
            s/^\s+//;
            s/\s+$//;
            next unless length $_;

            my ( $key, $value ) = split( /\s*=\s*/, $_, 2 );

            $config->{$key} = $value;

        }
    }

    close $conf_fh;

    return $conf;

} # }}}
[download]

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