I don't know why your code is so complicated but then I don't know what you're going to use it for; however, if you don't need all that complexity you could use this instead:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $format="%s%d%s%d";
my @args=("stuff",0,"-",0);
$args[1]=2;
$args[3]=10;
print "NEWNAME -> ",sprintf $format,@args;