Maybe I'm missing something here, but you might want to consider using a templating system. They do what you seem to want to do here. (i.e. Have a place holder in an HTML file that gets replaced dynamically by your script.)

I use HTML::Template. There are at least two good tutorials for HTML::Template available here at the Monastery. One is by Ovid and the other by jeffa.

In all fairness, there are other templating modules out there. You can find an article ("Choosing a Templating System") comparing and contrasting them.

Cheers!

Brent

-- Yeah, I'm a Delt.