You're declaring your variables with my, so as soon as you leave the eval block they go out of scope.

Good thought... taking the "my" out now gives the following spew:

$ perl loadData.pl
Name "main::fum" used only once: possible typo at loadData.pl line 16.
Name "main::fo" used only once: possible typo at loadData.pl line 16.
Name "main::fi" used only once: possible typo at loadData.pl line 16.
Name "main::fee" used only once: possible typo at loadData.pl line 16.
Variable "$fee" is not imported at (eval 1) line 1, <DAT> line 1.
Global symbol "$fee" requires explicit package name at (eval 1) line 1
+, <DAT> line 1.
Variable "$fi" is not imported at (eval 2) line 1, <DAT> line 2.
Global symbol "$fi" requires explicit package name at (eval 2) line 1,
+ <DAT> line 2.
Variable "$fo" is not imported at (eval 3) line 1, <DAT> line 3.
Global symbol "$fo" requires explicit package name at (eval 3) line 1,
+ <DAT> line 3.
Variable "@fum" is not imported at (eval 4) line 1, <DAT> line 4.
Global symbol "@fum" requires explicit package name at (eval 4) line 1
+, <DAT> line 4.
$VAR1 = undef;
$VAR2 = undef;
$VAR3 = undef;
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Following that thought one step further, let's declare them as "our." Run the code and we still see spew, but not as severe:

$ perl loadData.pl
Name "main::fum" used only once: possible typo at loadData.pl line 16.
Name "main::fo" used only once: possible typo at loadData.pl line 16.
Name "main::fi" used only once: possible typo at loadData.pl line 16.
Name "main::fee" used only once: possible typo at loadData.pl line 16.
$VAR1 = 'FEE';
$VAR2 = 'FI';
$VAR3 = 'FO';
$VAR4 = 'fee';
$VAR5 = 'fi';
$VAR6 = 'fo';
$VAR7 = 'fum';
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I guess in the end that means that you have to pre-declare the variables before reading in the "configuration file" and getting the values defined. Not pretty... but it works. I like the way I normally do it better. Which is to sey I either create a module and export my values or I use something like XML::Simple to do the dirty work.