What I meant was that when $x=q(ab,); the output was: "ab," cdefg
but I found out why it was doing this. I had forgotten to add the extra /e and so I kept running:

perl -le '$_=q(ab cdefg);$x=q(ab,);s/(^\w+)/qq("$x")/e;print;'
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But the problem is fixed now. Thank you monks.

-tengo mas que aprender