Redeclaring a variable means its value is reset. This means a change to $DEBUG in the main script would have no effect in the companion file. I don't relish the idea of having to go and manually set debug variables in every one of the companion files (I currently have sixteen of them, and the list may grow yet more), save them, then reupload ALL of them to the server every time I want to debug something--then of course reverse the process to stop debugging. Joy! Doesn't that sound Perlish? ...all instead of just importing a variable. I truly have a hard time wrapping my mind around this major lapse in the Perl capabilities.