@jdporter - brilliant

@runrig - yes, i meant using bind for interpolation. a lot of db abstraction layers in different languages support naming your bind variables -- instead of ? you'd have ?(varname) or something similar -- and then pass in a hash/dict

@haoess Text::Sprintf::Named is exactly what i needed.

@jeffa perl's sprintf is great when you have 2-4 variables that you're putting in. but sometimes your sprintf statements grow... and you end up with 2 paragraphs of text , sometimes which use 1 variable 4+ times ( like a class id for a nested div when autogenerating html ).

python was rather neat in that it allowed %s and %(named)s -- or any other format for its sprintf style stuff. it probably did arise out of not being able to interpolate strings - but its a simply wonderful feature for writing easy to use , legible code

thanks to all!