Is there no simple way to do this w/o invoking a module?

Sure there is!

$sentence = q("The next color is $color.");

$color = q(blue);

print eval $sentence;
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Note: There can be security implications if $color is supplied by user input.

Note: There can be security implications if $color is supplied by user input.

Famous last words!

No need for eval.

$sentence = sub { "The next color is ". shift };
$color = q(blue);

print $sentence->($color);
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Aha, that is what I was after. Thank you.

You could include some markup text in the string. When you come to render the HTML replace the markup text with the variable value. In its simplest version that could just entail using a regex.

But of course, what you are building is your own template system. When you need to go beyond a couple of trivial variable substitutions you'll realize you should have used a module in the first place. Being really lazy often entails a little more work up front.

$color = "green";
$text = "The color is $color"
$color = "blue";
print $text;
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It doesn't matter where your template string comes from, it's still a string containing some markup.

It's the same question with the same answer: use a templating system. Consider:

use warnings;
use strict;

for my $color (qw(green blue red puce)) {
    my $text = "The color is COLOR\n";

    $text =~ s/COLOR/$color/g;
    print $text;
}
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prints:

The color is green
The color is blue
The color is red
The color is puce
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