Spelling counts; it's $File::Find::name, and you can certainly assign the string to a variable--afterall $File::Find::name is just the name of a scalar variable itself (see the $ sign?). If you declare a variable in your program, like $full_path, the variable's real name is $main::full_path. So there is nothing special about $File::Find::name--it's just a regular ole variable, albeit it's declared in another file. When you write: use File::Find you are telling perl to look for a directory called File, which contains a file named Find. Inside the file Find.pm, you will find the declaration of the variable $name.