Hi Robert,
I have used Lua (www.lua.org) as a configuration language in the past.
One example was for an Abalone OpenGL 3d game I was making. See the saved game example text file below:

Code:
CreateBoard(
    "    1 1 1 1 1    " ,
    "   1 1 1 1 1 1   " ,
    "  . . 1 1 1 . .  " ,
    " . . . . . . . . " ,
    ". . . . 3 . . . ." ,
    " . . . . . . . . " ,
    "  . . 2 2 2 . .  " ,
    "   2 2 2 2 2 2   " ,
    "    2 2 2 2 2    ")

ClearActivePlayers()

AddActivePlayer(1,180)
AddActivePlayer(2,0)

SoundManager.LoadSound("Marble-Marble","Marble-Marble.wav")
SoundManager.LoadSound("Marble-Board" ,"Marble-Board.wav")
I linked routines in the Delphi program to Lua and called them like so above.

I have also used Lua for just simple stuff like:

Code:
ScreenWidth=320
ScreenHeight=240
FullScreen=true
where I have read in the global Lua variables and used them to configure the program

You can make it as simple, or as complex as you want really.
cheers,
Paul