one thing to keep in mind (get used to) as you migrate from PHP to Perl mode of thinking -- you can't really include/execute files the way you could in the PHP world. You can use "use" or "require" but the script that you have called via use or require has to compile properly. That means, it doesn't depend on any variable that hasn't been created yet, if it creates any variables that you want to access in the calling script then those vars have to be exported, and if the script has only subroutines in it then you really need a line like
1;
at the very end to let the Perl compiler know that every thing was ok. Otherwise, it will compile everything and won't have anything to show for it, and will complain.
Of course, if you really want to run some external file and use its results, why not just consider typing it in the same file... but, since that is a matter of preference, I leave that for you to decide.