http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=1008391

edbewald has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am not a new perl programmer and have learned most of what I know about PROGRAMMING IN GENERAL from this website. And though that may give me an edge, I am far from eloquent. Now I have a question.

I inherited a rather convoluted script from a former employee. He, unfortunately, did not believe in using warnings nor strict. He 'requires' a file that contains only 'constant' variables. My question is what is the easiest way to bring constants defined in one script into another.?

constants.pl:

$TRUE = 1; $FALSE = 0;

Main script:

require "constants.pl"; foreach $num ( 1...5 ) { if ($num < 3) { print $TRUE,"\n"; } else { print $FALSE,"\n"; } }

Desired output:

1 1 0 0 0

There are over 300 constants in the constants.pl file so this is just an example. I have tried making constants.pl into a package, using 'our' (not really sure when or if to use this), and 'use constant'. Searches on this site and the web have given me suggestions, but so far I can't make the main program import the 'constant' variables into my main script.