Am I understanding this correctly? The template is a file of your own creation, and using perl you read each line of the template, look for $header (for example), and if you find it, drop in your data? If so, you're reinventing the wheel ;) There's a nifty module called HTML::Template that can help you.

A template with HTML::Template takes the following format: 

<html>
  <head>
    <title><TMPL_VAR NAME=TITLE></title>
  </head>

  <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
    <TMPL_VAR NAME=BODYTEXT>
  </body>
</html>

[download]
Each TMPL_VAR entry is similar to $header, $footer, etc. You can then populate your template as easily as this: 
my $tmpl_frame = HTML::Template->new(filename =>
  "/path/to/my/template.tmpl");

$tmpl_frame->param(
  TITLE => "Sample Page",
  BODYTEXT => "This is some text."
);

print $tmpl_frame->output;

[download]
Cool, eh? ;)

Hope this helps,
MrCromeDome

In reply to Re: Forcing Variable Interpolation by MrCromeDome
in thread Forcing Variable Interpolation by fallenmonkey

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.