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    fastconfig('web.conf');

    print "The web address is: $website\n";     # website from conf

Generally, this is regarded as B<dangerous> and bad form, so I would
strongly advise using this form only in throwaway scripts, or not at
all.

=head1 VARIABLES

There are several global variables that can be set which affect how
C<fastconfig()> works. These can be set in the following way:

    use Config::Fast;
    $Config::Fast::Variable = 'value';
    %cf = fastconfig;

The recognized variables are:

=over

=item $Delim

The config file delimiter to use. This can also be specified as the second
argument to C<fastconfig()>. This defaults to C<\s+>.

=item $KeepCase

If set to 1, then C<MixedCaseVariables> are maintained intact. By default,
all variables are converted to lowercase.

=item $EnvCaps

If set to 1 (the default), then any C<ALLCAPS> variables are set as
environment variables. They are still returned in lowercase from 
C<fastconfig()>.

=item $Arrays

If set to 1, then settings that look like shell arrays are converted into
a Perl array. For example, this config block:

    MATRIX[0]="a b c"
    MATRIX[1]="d e f"
    MATRIX[2]="g h i"

Would be returned as:

    $conf{matrix} = [ 'a b c', 'd e f', 'g h i' ];

Instead of the default:

    $conf{matrix[0]} = 'a b c';
    $conf{matrix[1]} = 'd e f';
    $conf{matrix[2]} = 'g h i';

=item @Define

This allows you to pre-define var=val pairs that are set before the parsing
of the config file. I introduced this feature to solve a specific problem:
Executable relocation. In my config files, I put definitions such as:

    # Parsed by Config::Fast and sourced by shell scripts
    BIN="$ROOT/bin"
    SBIN="$ROOT/sbin"
    LIB="$ROOT/lib"
    ETC="$ROOT/etc"

With the goal that this file would be equally usable by both Perl and
shell scripts.

When parsed by C<Config::Fast>, I pre-define C<ROOT> to C<pwd> before
calling C<fastconfig()>:

    use Cwd;
    my $pwd = cwd;
    @Config::Fast::Define = ([ROOT => $pwd]);
    my %conf = fastconfig("$pwd/conf/core.conf");

Each element of 


=item %Convert

This is a hash of regex patterns specifying values that should be converted
before being returned. By default, values that look like C<true|on|yes>
will be converted to 1, and values that match C<false|off|no> will be
converted to 0. You could set your own conversions with:

    $Config::Fast::CONVERT{'fluffy|chewy'} = 'taffy';

This would convert any settings of "fluffy" or "chewy" to "taffy".

=back

=head1 NOTES

Variables starting with a leading underscore are considered reserved
and should not be used in your config file, unless you enjoy painfully
mysterious behavior.

For a much more full-featured config module, check out C<Config::ApacheFormat>.
It can handle Apache style blocks, array values, etc, etc. This one is
supposed to be fast and easy.

=head1 VERSION

$Id: Fast.pm,v 1.7 2006/03/06 22:18:41 nwiger Exp $

=head1 AUTHOR

Copyright (c) 2002-2005 Nathan Wiger <nate@wiger.org>. All Rights Reserved.

This module is free software; you may copy this under the terms of
the GNU General Public License, or the Artistic License, copies of
which should have accompanied your Perl kit.

=cut