Update: This was excessively rude and brutal on my part. Although probably factually accurate, I should have found a more polite way to say this than the method I chose. I'm sure the OP is a good guy whose code does what it's intended to do, whatever issues it might have from a purist's point of view.

His full statement was:

Using return is not an option, as I have a whole lot of variables that has to be available in about 8 different scripts.

He might just as well say:

I don't want to return variables because I want to write crappy code - I just want to put use strict at the top of the files so it doesn't look like crap, or because it looks cool, or because "everyone says I should".

He is building a demonic cluster-f***, which will torment him and all who follow.

And I'm not trying to be mean, but this is not the way to do a project. There is a reason you break things into pieces, but if you're going to use global variables everywhere, <sarcasm>better to have it all in 1 file 10000 lines long, where at least you find all the references to your globals.</sarcasm>.

--Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com