This isn't exactly a "what's wrong with this" type of question, so bear with me :)

With one of our products, we are hoping to integrate some accounting software. Naturally, we'd prefer that the software be open-source (not necessarily free) and written in Perl. I've reviewed a number of packages that my boss has sent to me and I have said 'no' to every one. Here's a small code snippet from, believe it or not, one of the better written products.

    # Untaint $db, $args and $columns.
    $db =~ /(.*)/; $db = $1;
    $args =~ /(.*)/; $args = $1;
    $columns =~ /(.*)/; $columns = $1;
    $stripheader =~ /(.*)/; $stripheader = $1;
    my @entries = qx{ $ROW $args < $db $columns $stripheader };
[download]

If this were the only example of that problem, I might be less worried, but I saw this repeatedly throughout the code.

On to the main question: are there any decent open-source accounting packages in Perl? We need GL, AR, AP, Inventory control. Any other features would be a bonus. We've also considered merely going through these packages for a specs requirement and writing our own rather than deal with the many burdens that cleaning up someone else's code entails.

Second question: how do you evaluate software packages? Do you have a checklist that you go through, or is everything evaluated on a case-by-case basis? (for example, I'd consider acceptable a wonderfully written product that didn't use strict -- read anything by TheDamian :)

Cheers,
Ovid

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