It's true that globals are messy, but that is the way File::Find works. To avoid unexpected behavior with lexical closures, I declare the globals with use vars qw/. . ./; to place them in the symbol table and satisfy strict.

It sounds as if your uses for this are mainly as configuration flags which will not be changed during a run. That is pretty manageable as global variables go.

Update: ++thospel's solution takes advantage of lexical closures to place a wrapper around the find call. Very elegant!. Added: On second look, I think that solution may still have difficulty with closures taking on unexpected values. Localizing the variables may be preferable. Test before you leap.