?

I was replying to the OP on why he had that error and the only reasonable way to correct that code. I never recommended eval-ing concatenated strings as a good practice. The opposite as a matter of facts!

Eval()-ing has, of course, its use cases, but as I said, it's dangerous in this particular case. One of the reasons of why I encouraged using some of the mentioned CPAN alternatives, if possible, to navigate nested structures.