Re^4: Executing a string as a Perl command

[ctilmes]

in reply to Re^3: Executing a string as a Perl command
in thread Executing a string as a Perl command

This short illustrative example has $cmd set inline, but in a real program, it could be constructed from other variables, it could be read from a user, it could be read from a file, etc.

The question was simply how to get it to execute once it was set. The answer is eval.

[Anonymous Monk]

eval is the wrong answer since it can run arbitrary code

If the user gives you some form of # rm -rf * ~ / , a lot of your files get deleted

[ctilmes]

The OP said nothing about a user supplying the string. We pointed out that there are security concerns if you don't trust the string.

If you want to run arbitrary code supplied by a 100% trusted source at runtime, what would you use other than eval?