Using sprintf will work, but i doubt that was what you were looking for. How about something more OO like IO::Scalar?

use strict;
use warnings;
use IO::Scalar;

my $out = IO::Scalar->new();
$out->print("hello world\n");
$out->print(qw(foo bar baz), "\n");
print $out;
[download]

But .... why reinvent a wheel? There are a plethora of templating/embedding modules out there ... if you want to embed your Perl (bleh!), then i recommend HTML::Mason or Apache::ASP.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)