Using some kind of a dispatch table might be a more secure solution.

Thanks Anonymous Monk and Choroba, that's what I was looking for!

If at all possible, I would also rather go for a dispatch table within the program (or a used module), rather than a DB with code snippets.

Uh huh ... I feel exactly the same way about “evaling code taken from a database” as I do about the original way that JSON used to work.   JSON was conceptually simple in those early, trusting days:   “simply send JavaScript to the client, who can then execute it.”   (And, if you recall, PHP allowed you to send arbitrary variable-names in URL-strings, too.)   It is simply “too unsafe to consider” nowadays ... in addition to the fact that it introduces into the program “source-code that is not here.”   A genie you just can’t afford to let out of its bottle, regardless of language or situation.

Hi,

Find this below example. It may be useful for you.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $val = q| my @array= qw(A R N D);
splice(@array,0,4,qw(B N M C));
print Dumper \@array;
|;
eval($val);
[download]

yes you can use 'eval' to evaluate code from an exogenous source, I did this some time ago. In my case I hadn't completely figured out how to use DBI and was generating some DBI commands, saving them as strings and evaluating them with eval. Although doable, I think this falls into the category of there has to be a better way not only due to security reasons but also because it can be very difficult to debug.