See Object Serialization Basics for a few pointers, but it might be easier to use CGI.pm's (alt.) own save() and restore_paramaters() functions, along with your open() and flock()s.

  --k.

1111|2222|3333

You can then read them into your variables like so:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

# declare your variables
my $varFile = "variables.txt";
my ($var1,$var2,$var3);

# open the file
open DATA, $varFile or die "Can't open file: $!";
  while (<DATA>) {
# chomp the line
    chomp;
# split the line into values and assign them to your variables
    ($var1,$var2,$var3) = split /\|/;
  }
# close the file
close DATA;
[download]

The length of the code can be reduced substantially, but this gives you an idea of what's going on.

use Storable;
store \%hash, 'data';
$hr = retrieve 'data';
[download]

use strict;
my $cake = 'chocolate';
my $pie = 'apple';
eval slurp("config.pl");
[download]

## slurp - read a file into a scalar or list
sub slurp {
    my $file = shift;
    local *F;
    open F, "< $file" or die "Error opening '$file' for read: $!";
    if(not wantarray){
        local $/ = undef;
        my $string = <F>;
        close F;
        return $string;
    }
    local $/ = "";
    my @a = <F>;
    close F;
    return @a;
}
[download]

$pie = 'pecan';
cake = 'fairy';
[download]

If you are interested in errors from the eval, it can be followed by something like...

if($@){
    print "Some errors happened...\n\n";
    print $@."\n\n";
    print "Oh well...\n";
}
[download]

Here's what I use in my scripts. Say you have a text file named "config.txt" that looks like this:

# This is my configuration file
variable1=111
variable2=222
[download]

I put this sub into my script to read that data back in:

sub GetSetting
{
my ($cfg_value,$cfg_filename,$cfg_default)=@_;
open(CFGFILE,"<$cfg_filename") or die "Can't open configuration file $
+cfg_filename.";
my @cf=<CFGFILE>;
foreach $cfg_line (@cf)
{
if (index($cfg_line,"#")==0) { next; } # Lines starting with a hash ma
+rk are comments
my @ln=split("=",$cfg_line);
if ($ln[0] =~ /$cfg_value/i) {
chomp $ln[1];
return $ln[1];
}
}
close CFGFILE;
return $cfg_default; # Return default if we can't find the value 
}
[download]

You set the default value when you call the sub. To read the setting back in, just do like so:

I would submit that it is often better to read all the configuration information at once. Here's a snippet that uses this philosophy:

use strict;
 
my(%config) =
("variable1" => "default1",
 "variable2" => "default2");
 
&get_settings("myconfig",\%config);
 
sub get_settings{
  my($filename,$config_hash) = @_;
  my($var,$val);
 
  return unless ref $config_hash eq "HASH";
 
  open(CFGFILE,"<$filename")
    or die "Cannot open config file $filename: $!";
  while (<CFGFILE>){
    chomp;
    next if /^#/;
    ($var,$val) = split(/=/,$_,2);
    $config_hash->{$var} = $val if exists $config_hash->{$var};
  }
  close(CFGFILE);
}
[download]

Of course, there's always Config::General, but it's probably overkill and you may not be able to count on it being there for you.

Part of the reason why I like to grab settings "on the fly" is because you can then change those settings at runtime. By grabbing the setting only when I need it, I can tweak the configuration file while the script is running. For settings that can't be changed while running, I load them in at the beginning of the script and store them in scalars.

A genius writes code an idiot can understand, while an idiot writes code the compiler can't understand.

# save stuff
print FILE '$myvar = ' . $myvar . ";\n";

# saving
print FILE "myvar = $myvar\n";
print FILE "anothervar = $anothervar\n";

# retrieving
while (<FILE>) {
  if (/^(\w+) *= *(.+)$/) {
     ${$1} = $2;
  }
}