NAME

  BW::Config.pm

SYNOPSIS

  use BW::Config;
  my $config = BW::Config->new( { filename => $filename } );
  my $values = $config->values;

  my $config = BW::Config->new;
  $config->parse( { filename => $filename } );
  my $values = $config->values;

  my $errstr;
  if(($errstr = $config->error)) { 
    # report $errstr here
  }

DESCRIPTION

BW::Config reads and parses simple configuration files.

METHODS

version

Return the version string.

filename

Set or return the filename used by BW::Config->parse.

keywords

Return an arrayref of keywords, in the order they appear in the config file.

values

Return a hashref of key/value pairs.

arrays

Return a hashref of key/arrayref pairs for multi-item values.

error

Return the latest error condition. The error string is cleared when it is read.

FILE FORMAT

The config file format is very simple. It's a line-oriented format where keys and values are separated by an equals sign (=).

  key = value

Whitespace surrounding the keys and values is ignored.

Array values (multiple values per key) are separated by colons.

  key = value:value:value:value

If you want the raw colon-separated value, you can get that with the values method.

Lines that begin with '#' are ignored.

  # this is a comment 

anything after '#' to the end of the line is considered a comment and is ignored.

  key = value # comment comment blah blah blah

All leading and trailing whitespace are trimed, and a key without a value is assumed to have a zero-length string as the value.

NOTES

• Values are never undef. A zero-length string is provided for null content.

• Errors are reported via the BW::Config->error method. It's a good idea to check this before using the values from your config file.

    if((my $errorstring = $config->error)) {
      die $errorstring;  # or some other way of reporting the error
    }

BUGS AND MISFEATURES

There is no quoting mechanism for the config file. The colon-separated arrays are particularly weak. There should be a way to quote a colon so it's not interpreted as such.

There should also be a way to quote strings and quote marks. These may be features for a future version.

AUTHOR

Written by Bill Weinman <http://bw.org/>.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1995-2010 The BearHeart Group, LLC

HISTORY

2010-02-14 bw 1.1 - initial CPAN version 2008-04-02 bw - initial BW-Lib version

cpanm BW::CGI

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install BW::CGI