When I have a set of config values to be shared by many programs, I put them in a module and 'use' it. I manually export the variables into the main package as described by Dominus here.

YuckFoo

====
MyConfig.pm
====
   package MyConfig;

   my $CONFIG = { color => 'blue', animal => 'camel' };

   *{"::CONFIG"} = \$CONFIG;

1;

====
testit.pl
====
#!/usr/bin/perl

   use strict;
   use MyConfig;

   print "$CONFIG->{color} $CONFIG->{animal}\n";
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