In a situation like this, my own preference is to use look-arounds to avoid capturing (and substituting back) more than necessary (tested under 5.8.9): 

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @lines = (
   'Once upon a time',
   'scrooge & donald',
   'went for a long walk',
   );
 ;;
 my @list = qw(huey dewey louis);
 ;;
 foreach my $who (@list) {
   print qq{who '$who'};
   foreach my $ln (@lines) {
     (my $newln = $ln) =~ s{ scrooge (?= \s+ & \s+ donald) }{$who}xmsg
+;
     print qq{    '$newln'};
     }
   }
"
who 'huey'
    'Once upon a time'
    'huey & donald'
    'went for a long walk'
who 'dewey'
    'Once upon a time'
    'dewey & donald'
    'went for a long walk'
who 'louis'
    'Once upon a time'
    'louis & donald'
    'went for a long walk'

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Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

In reply to Re^2: variables in substition/eval by AnomalousMonk
in thread variables in substition/eval by xaphod

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