Question

I have a Perl script that is getting big, so I want to break it out into multiple scripts. namely, I want to take out some large hash declarations and put them into another file. How do I get the original script to be able to see and use the variables that are now being declared in the other script?

This is driving me nuts because I haven’t used Perl in a while and for the life of me can’t figure this out

Answer 1

Use a module:

package Literature;

our %Sidekick = (
  Batman => "Robin",
  Bert   => "Ernie",
  Don    => "Sancho",
);

1;

For example:

#! /usr/bin/perl

use Literature;

foreach my $name (keys %Literature::Sidekick) {
  print "$name => $Literature::Sidekick{$name}\n";
}

Output:

$ ./prog 
Bert => Ernie
Batman => Robin
Don => Sancho