Re^2: Never, never, never

[Joost]

I agree.

In my experience, symbolic references should be used (when you can) in preference to eval STRING - basically, when you're generating code (esp. converting closures to "regular" subroutines etc.) In those cases they're generally easier to use and less error prone than eval "".

Eval string is still useful too - but you need to be wary of scoping issues and typo's, which can be difficult in generated code. The only thing I regulary use it for is eval "use $some_module";