in reply to Environment variables

Another way of seeing it is as a primitive precursor of the Windows registry; or the registry as an over-developed descendant of the environment. Of course Windows cannot settle on one of them and uses both, ... plus individual configuration files (*.cfg or *.ini) placed left and right on your hard disk.

Fortunately, Perl knows how to deal with all of them!

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom