OT: emacs-style variables (etc) in the headers?

[Mike]

I'm starting on a project where I want to include script
snippets in the headers of files (perl, shell, etc.) actually
inside comments where these snippets will not bother the real
script. Is there an algorithm somewhere to detect the script
is really a script and not a binary file, what the comment
character is, and some standard way to include these variables
and such in files?

Mike