Storable is a more reliable way to store variables. From the Storable manpage:

use Storable;
store \%table, 'file';
$hashref = retrieve('file');
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or alternatively:

use Storable qw(nstore store_fd nstore_fd freeze thaw dclone);

 # Storing to and retrieving from an already opened file
store_fd \@array, \*STDOUT;
nstore_fd \%table, \*STDOUT;
$aryref = fd_retrieve(\*SOCKET);
$hashref = fd_retrieve(\*SOCKET);
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Of course, if you need to include other things besides variables in the config, you may want to consider turning your code into a module