I'm assuming when you say access these variable in other forms you mean in other cgi scripts (or other invocations of this one). If that's the case then, yes, you need some way to propogate the sessionid across different processes. One way is cookies, another is hidden form fields and another is url-rewritting. Cookies tends to be the easiest but some users get freaked out by cookies deny them from being set. If you have to deal with those users then you need to use one of the other approaches. Have you read through CGI::Session::Tutorial?