If you are using double quotes as you indicate, there isn't an interpolation problem; am I missing something?

my @time = (1, 2, 3);
my $counter = 5;
my $s = "Today is $time[1] and you have seen this $counter times!";
@messages=($s);
foreach $m(@messages){print "$m\n";}
[download]

Output:

Today is 2 and you have seen this 5 times!
[download]

chas
(Update: Also, if I read the lines from a file using the diamond operator and push them onto @messages, it seems to work fine.)