in reply to conf file in Perl syntax

If - for some reason - you do not want to use the suggested config::inifiles module, or just want to know how to access the contents of a hash, you can use the "each" function.
while (my ($host,$ip) = each(%$config)) { print "$host => $ip\n"; }
be aware that $config contains a reference to a hash.

cheers si_lence