It works if you declare your variables using our.

I've never actually used this method though... see perldoc -f our for info on how it affects scope.

You can ensure you don't go clobbering things by reassigning the imported values once you get them (if you feel safer)

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
our ($x);
my $file = 'conf.pl';
unless (my $return = do $file) {
    warn "couldn't parse $file: $@" if $@;
    warn "couldn't do $file: $!"    unless defined $return;
    warn "couldn't run $file"       unless $return;
}
print "\$x is $x\n";

my $var_x=$x;

##########   config script (my.conf)
$x = 'abcdef';
[download]

I suppose the method you are going to use depends on who is going to be editing the config file, doesn't it... if they know perl then any method should be fine. If they don't then a standard INI format or plain assignments might be better.

HTH - mark