As the title says you can import a variable into a script or module without using Exporter.pm. I have found it useful to keep all the configuration variables in one module My::Config. But then I have to export all the variables in order to use them in other modules, which is bad for two reasons: polluting other packages' name spaces with extra tags which increases the memory requirements; and adding the overhead of keeping track of what variables should be exported from the configuration module and what imported, for some particular package. I solve this problem by keeping all the variables in one hash %c and exporting that. Here is an example of My::Config:

  package My::Config;
  use strict;
  use vars qw(%c);
  %c = (
    # All the configs go here
    scalar_var => 5,

    array_var  => [qw(foo bar)],

    hash_var   => {
                   foo => 'Foo',
                   bar => 'BARRR',
                  },
  );
  1;

Now in packages that want to use the configuration variables I have either to use the fully qualified names like $My::Config::test, which I dislike or import them as described in the previous section. But hey, since I have only one variable to handle, I can make things even simpler and save the loading of the Exporter.pm package. I will use the Perl aliasing feature for exporting and saving the keystrokes:

  package My::HTML;
  use strict;
  use lib qw(.);
    # Global Configuration now aliased to global %c
  use My::Config (); # My/Config.pm in the same dir as script.pl
  use vars qw(%c);
  *c = \%My::Config::c;

    # Now you can access the variables from the My::Config
  print $c{scalar_var};
  print $c{array_var}[0];
  print $c{hash_var}{foo};

Of course $c is global everywhere you use it as described above, and if you change it somewhere it will affect any other packages you have aliased $My::Config::c to.

Note that aliases work either with global or local() vars - you cannot write:

  my *c = \%My::Config::c; # ERROR!

Which is an error. But you can write:

  local *c = \%My::Config::c;

For more information about aliasing, refer to the Camel book, second edition, pages 51-52.