Hi Donnie,

you need a template system :) Something like HTML::Template or Text::Template. This my solution for your problem, a bit overkill and maybe unorthodox. Suppose you have a file named script.in with the following content:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $hold='<TMPL_VAR HOLD>';
my $leave = '<TMPL_VAR LEAVE>';
my $munge = '<TMPL_VAR MUNGE>';
[download]

The program that will substitute HOLD, LEAVE and MUNGE is something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use HTML::Template;

use vars qw( $in %args $template );

$in = shift @ARGV;
%args = @ARGV;

$template = HTML::Template->new( filename => $in );
$template->param(%args);
print $template->output;
[download]

Now you can use it this way:

./fill_blanks script.in HOLD this LEAVE that MUNGE these

which prints the following:

#!/usr/bin/perl

$hold = "this";
$leave = "that";
$munge = "these";
[download]

Ciao, Valerio

Update: you are welcome Donnie :)