ConfHelper(3pm)

NAME

ConfHelper - Configuration file management

SYNOPSIS

  use ConfHelper;
  $file = new ConfHelper('myprogram', '/etc/myprogram.conf');

DESCRIPTION

ConfHelper is a module that is designed to help you edit configuration files in an automated way without trampling on the toes of users or other programs. It does this by using "chunking"; that is, your program modifies a certain chunk of the config file and does not touch everything else. While this approach is not appropriate everywhere, it can be remarkably useful anyway.

The methods that return a chunk of data (an entire configuration area) return an array. Each element in the array is a single line that has been run through chomp(). When passed back to set() functions, the newline character is added back on before being written to disk.

METHODS

new($package, $filename): Creates a new object. The package parameter declares the name of your program or package, and the filename parameter specifies the name of the configuration file.

getversion: Returns the version of the ConfHelper module that created the object.

config($variable, $value)

Sets a configuration variable. The following are valid configuration variables:

startline: Specifies the complete text of the line that is used to identify the start of the ConfHelper section of your config file.

endline: Specifies the complete text of the line that is used to identify the end of the ConfHelper section of your config file.

hasconfarea: Returns 1 if the file has a configuration area, and 0 otherwise.

getconfarea: Returns your configuration area from the configuration file as a large array. If there is none, it returns undef.

getotherareas: Returns an array that represents all non-ConfHelper areas of your configuration file.

setconfarea(@confarea): This method will set the configuration area to the value of the string passed as a parameter. ConfHelper will automatically rotate the file, saving backups of it.

setotherarea_DANGEROUS(@otherarea): Sets the non-confarea portion of the file to the value specified. NOTE: THIS FUNCTION IS DANGEROUS AND SHOULD NOT BE USED UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY! The configuration file is NOT rotated when this call is used.

AUTHOR

John Goerzen <[email protected]> of Progeny Linux Systems http://www.progeny.com.

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA