Greetings all,
Here is a thought... Could you create an object and then use the "Class Data" idea that the perltoot tutorial gives for its Census example? It seems to me this would help you factor out those aspects of your code that you would like to keep global across the application as well as provide a location for storage of your global vars.
-InjunJoel
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use." -Galileo