One of the scripts in question is being run on offsite systems, which have a default perl config (in house Solaris packaged perl build) that has a very limited number of additional modules. The last time we got the package rebuilt with an additional module, it took 6 months from request to distribution - and that was a critical requirement. Anything not considered critical would be more trouble than it's worth from my POV.

I suspect that's one of the few reasons for reinventing the wheel :)

One of the other scripts I'm considering for this may be better to use a different method, since I'm considering contributing it to the SpamAssassin project - meaning it would probably be best to use Config::Inifiles or YAML (XML would be a real learning curve at this point, but not something I'm opposed to).