Making a file readable by a script alone but not by the user

Linux2011

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone can help me in the following case.

I am writing a CLI application in perl where the non root user would ssh to a machine and run this application. This application reads a config file which contains usernames, passwords and DSN details of databas(es) to connect to. The user provides the name of the database as an argument to the application.

Basically, I would like this config file to be read by the application alone but not directly by the user using text readers like (e.g. more, less, vi etc).

Many thanks.