Of course there are several ways to achieve this.

Leaving the file as-is, you could apply the substitution regex

$line =~ s/(\$[a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/ eval ($1) /ge;
[download]

This should work under the assumptions that you are using only scalar variables with names consisting of "standard" characters (let me be a bit sloppy about this issue) and that the $ character only appears in variable names.

Another possibility is making up a simple template language. I like to use <:name:> for placeholders to be interpolated. If your needs are limited, you can probably hack a quite stable solution in a few minutes.

Then, along the lines of cjf-II's suggestion, you can try one of the more complete templating solutions available on CPAN.

Cheers

Antonio

The stupider the astronaut, the easier it is to win the trip to Vega - A. Tucket