Regex for reading file

This snippet of code will read file and ignore all lines that start with '#' (ignore comment lines)

open(RFILE, "< $filename") or die "Error open $filename: $!\n";

while (<RFILE>) {

        chomp;                      #remove end of line

        s/^#.*//;                     #no leading '#'

        s/\s+#.*//;                  #no multiple white space end with '#'

        s/^\s+//;                     #no leading white space

        s/\s+$//;                     #no trailing white space

        next unless length;

        my ($key,$val) = split(/\s*=\s*/,$_,2);

        $CONF{$key} = $val;

        }

close(RFILE);

Example configuration file:

  # my network configuration

  ip = 192.168.1.1

  netmask = 255.255.255.0

     # old gateway = 192.168.1.252

  gateway = 192.168.1.254

So, 

$CONF{'ip'} has a value '192.168.1.1'

$CONF{'netmask'} has a value '255.255.255.0'

$CONF{'gateway'} has value '192.168.1.254