If it is per session you may use a cookies and CGI::Session to tuck data away that is usable via all the cgi scripts that know about the session store. Else if you just want to load up default config vars in your cgi scripts you may use a require on each script that loads a config.pl file that has all of your global config vars present. If you just want to share a writable var between processes look at IPC::Shareable. Not very pretty -- but certainly doable.