I personally think that 'main' variables, while able to be accessed by subroutines declared in the same package, are safe enough, as long as you don't access them directly in a subroutine.

use strict;
my $foo = 'yo';

&bar($foo);
print "$foo\n";

sub bar {
    my $bar = shift;
    $bar .= ' dude';
}
[download]

Declare you variables in main, just don't use them directly in your subroutines and you'll be okay.

Jeff

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F--
(the triplet paradiddle)