Conflagration The AptPkg::Config module provides objects which look somewhat like hash references but have some more interesting properties. Given: $c->{Dir} = '/'; $c->{Dir::Cache} = 'var/cache/apt/'; $c->{Dir::Cache::archives} = 'archives/'; then $c->{'Dir::Cache::archives/d'} also returns the parent directory parts: /var/cache/apt/archives/ There are additionally get and set methods which may be used rather than accessing the object as a hashref, and get_file, get_dir and get_bool methods which are the same as suffixing the hash keys with /f, /d or /b. Configuration keys are not case sensitive.