Current Perl documentation can be found at perldoc.perl.org.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

Let's assume that you have a string like:

    $text = 'this has a $foo in it and a $bar';

If those were both global variables, then this would suffice:

    $text =~ s/\$(\w+)/${$1}/g;

But since they are probably lexicals, or at least, they could be, you'd have to do this:

    $text =~ s/(\$\w+)/$1/eeg;
    die if $@;                  # needed on /ee, not /e

It's probably better in the general case to treat those variables as entries in some special hash. For example:

    %user_defs = ( 
        foo  => 23,
        bar  => 19,
    );
    $text =~ s/\$(\w+)/$user_defs{$1}/g;

See also ``How do I expand function calls in a string?'' in this section of the FAQ.