I have several cgi scripts that use the same config.pl file. My problem is that I had trouble referencing the %config hash. If I move the 'our %CONFIG = ();' to the config.pl file I get errors, but if I declare it in main:: all is OK. Since config.pl doesn't have a package identifier, I was under the impression that it became part of main:: #!/usr/bin/perl -- use strict; our %CONFIG = (); # need to declare the config vars, fails if moved to config.pl require "config.pl" ; # set the config variables require "net.pl"; # common routines for link exhange require "common.pm"; # common routines for all my cgi's