capture errors from eval

[sdetweil]

I'm back again..

in prior topics I discussed a section of my code that allows my users to execute an arbitrary regular expression using

eval $w;

where $w contains the expression..

but, if they code it wrong, my application dies.

for example, expression= '/HOST=.*('

will yield a fatal die error..

Unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in

but I don't want it to be fatal..

the contents of $w is (no quotes)
'$expdata =~ /HOST=.*(;'

but eval {$w;} is ignored

--- from the perl content on eval
eval '$x'; # CASE 3
eval { $x }; # CASE 4
Cases 3 and 4 likewise behave in the same way: they run the code '$x', which does nothing but return the value of $x. ---

and I can confirm that the expression itself does not execute.

So.. is there some trick to this?

thanks