I wouldn't use require because it would decline to load the same file twice (unless you monkey with %INC). Also, I don't know if it would return the value returned by the file (I think it doesn't).

It actually does :)

I've been using require for a while to read simple config files: it does syntax error checking and the fact that it only loads once was not a big deal. However, I agree that YAML (or Config::IniFiles et al.) are safer and should be preferred.