#!/usr/bin/perl

use HTML::Entities;

my $name = 'blablabla';

my $sender = sprintf('Piero <%s@imap>', $name);

my $sender_enc = encode_entities($sender);

printf("%s\n%s", $sender, $sender_enc);

# Ausgabe:
#Piero <blablabla@imap>
#Piero &lt;blablabla@imap&gt;