mechanism in perl to read config-file

One common method for writing configuration files for Perl scripts is to have the file consist of executable Perl statements like this example of yours. It's convenient but not secure.

To execute the statements contained in the file, you would typically use a 'require' or 'do' statement.

do "config-file.txt";

Along the lines of jmcg's answer, you could try:  (This is assuming your config file is called data.dat). As jmcg mentioned, this is probably not a very safe way of doing this, but depending on your situation, it may be fine.


As well, if you didn't use strict, you wouldn't need to declare the variables before the eval. That would likely lead to some sloppy and buggy code though.


use strict;

my $filename;
my $servername;

open FH, "data.dat";

while (<FH>) {

      eval;

}

print $filename;
print $servername;

The module Config::Inifiles should to this:
http://search.cpan.org/~wadg/Config-IniFiles-2.38/IniFiles.pm

@jmcg:
this sounds as the easiest one.

But variables defined in this config-file are undefined in the perl-script!

any idea

thx
michi

You don't have a 'Package' directive in this config file, do you?

Or are you saying that the 'do' gets complaints from the perl compiler because you have said 'use strict;' ???

run.pl:
--cut--
use strict;
my $var=":-(";
do "run.cfg";
print "$var\n";
--cut--

run.cfg:
--cut--
$var=":-)";
--cut--

"perl run.pl" returns ":-("

do I have to code something else in "run.cfg"

thx
michi

"our" works fine!!!

but can anyone explain why:

use strict;
my $var=":-(";
do "run.cfg";
print $main::var."\n";

=> ":-)"

BUT:

use strict;
my $var=":-(";
do "run.cfg";
print $var."\n";

=> ":-("

thx
michi

$mail::var accesses the global $var variable in your first example. By giving the fully-qualified name, you bypass the lexical $var that was declared with "my".

The second example is still getting the lexical.