You may not be aware that there already are a number of excellent modules for this job. To name but the popular ones,

• the absolutely fabulous shooting star Template Toolkit 2
• HTML::Template
• CGI::FastTemplate
• Text::Template
• Text::Templar
• Text::FastTemplate

..and that's just scratching the surface. See perrin's templating system roundup at Perl.com for a more detailed "tour" around some of these and general comments on the topic.

Makeshifts last the longest.