An alternative method would be slurping the file into a string and then eval'ing the string. This way you'd have the resulting hash in the same lexical scope as the rest of your variables (or more precisely, the scope of the "imported" variable will be determined by the place of the declaration, see below).

This method also allows you to "import" more than one variable from the file.

Example:

#############
# settings.pl
%hash1 = (
    a => 1,
    b => 2,
);

%hash2 = (
    c => 3,
    d => 4,
);
#############

#############
# main.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my %hash1; # declaring them here
my %hash2; 

{
local $/;
open(my $fh, '<', 'settings.pl') || die "Can't open settings\n";
my $string = <$fh>;
eval $string;
close $fh;
}

print Dumper \%hash1;
print Dumper \%hash2;
#############

shell$ perl main.pl
$VAR1 = {
          'a' => 1,
          'b' => 2
        };
$VAR1 = {
          'c' => 3,
          'd' => 4
        };
[download]