If you are new to perl probably you don't want starting installing modules...

There is a poor man's solution for evaluating configfiles as scripts with do

this works with your example: 

our $config;
do './conf.pl' or die "Can't read config $!";
print $config->{host_1};

[download]

or even more error proved described in the docs with

# read in config files: system first, then user
for $file ("/share/prog/defaults.rc",
           "$ENV{HOME}/.someprogrc")
    {
          unless ($return = do $file) {
              warn "couldn't parse $file: $@" if $@;
              warn "couldn't do $file: $!"    unless defined $return;
              warn "couldn't run $file"       unless $return;
          }
    }

[download]

BE AWARE: do searches the @INC directories, so better use a path to avoid problems...

Cheers Rolf

UPDATE: As I wrote the config-file is evaluated as script not parsed as data, so be aware of necessities of securing this code! If it's just a one way script, and you have full control it's ok. If you mean to write a full scale program for others, better use a config-module.

In reply to Re: conf file in Perl syntax by LanX
in thread conf file in Perl syntax by Ravendark

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.