Here's the kind of thing you could do if this needs to be quick and dirty and you don't have time to learn Template::Toolkit:
my $variable = 'This is a value!';
my $variable_name = '$variable';
my $template = snarf('template.htm');
$template =~ s/\Q$variable_name\E/$variable/g;
print $template;
sub snarf {
local $/ = undef;
my $template_file = shift;
open F, $template_file or die "can't open $template_file";
my $template = <F>;
close F;
$template;
}
with the template.htm file containing:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Title</TITLE>
</HEAD>
The variable is : $variable
<BR><BR>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0>
<TR><TD>
<HR color=#99ffcc SIZE=4>
<FONT face=Arial color=#99ffcc><B>
Bottom text
</B></FONT>
</TD></TR></TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>