And for completeness sake you can always import all your vars into a separate namespace, automagically creating a set of variables on the way. From the CGI.pm docs:

$query->import_names('R');

This creates a series of variables in the 'R' namespace. For example, 
$R::foo, @R:foo. For keyword lists, a variable @R::keywords will 
appear. If no namespace is given, this method will assume 'Q'. 
WARNING: don't import anything into 'main'; this is a major 
security risk!!!!

NOTE 1: Variable names are transformed as necessary into legal 
Perl variable names. All non-legal characters are transformed into 
underscores. If you need to keep the original names, you should 
use the param() method instead to access CGI variables by name.

NOTE 2: In older versions, this method was called import(). As of
version 2.20, this name has been removed completely to avoid 
conflict with the built-in Perl module import operator.
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