Can you post a bit of how the hash is declared in the one script, and how it is used in the other?

Maybe you have

# config.pl
$config{ base_dir } = '/opt/myapp';
$config{ bin_dir } =  "$config{ base_dir }/bin";
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... and then in the main program(s):

require 'config.pl';
print "My config is $config{ base_dir }\n";
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Then you can add use strict to both files if you add use vars '%config'; to both of them.