note eyepopslikeamosquito <P> Be aware that most Perl experts discourage the use of string eval. For example: <ul> <li> [merlyn] in [id://405165] states: Do not resort to eval-string if other means are available. You're firing up the compiler (slower than almost any other solution), and exposing yourself to hard to debug and hard to secure practices. <li> In this <a href="http://perl.plover.com/qotw/e/solution/001"> quiz of the week</a> MJD states: A good rule of thumb is that unless what you're trying to do is most clearly described as "compile and run arbitrary Perl code", it's probably a mistake to use 'eval' to do it. <li> <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlbp/index.html">Perl Best Practices</a>, Chapter 8, has a guideline titled: <I>Avoid string eval</I>. Conway argues that string eval can be slow; produces run time warnings rather than more desirable compile time warnings; and code that generates other code tends to be harder to maintain. </ul> </P> 880918 880918