Put your common functions in a module. That module will inherit from Exporter. It will also set up everything for EXPORT_OK, or whatever as you'll find appropriate. Each other module can just use Common qw(funcs this module does the default action for);. That's exactly what you're asking for ... and the only difference between this and Corion's answer is that this one uses a standard module to do the dirty work (playing with 'no strict' and stuff).