in reply to safe regex variables

Your question has already been answered, but I have the feeling that you'll save yourself a lot of time if you check out MIME::tools, or perhaps MIME::Lite, if you haven't already. As we love to say around here, don't reinvent the wheel, use CPAN.
   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print