Re (tilly) 2: syntax check from within perl

But see discussion elsewhere in the thread.

The reader did not realize that perl -c does not provide a safe way to test syntactical correctness. There is no way to do that in Perl.

For instance suppose that it does a use. There is no way to know if later code is syntactically correct without running the used module. (For instance what functions are exported? This affects what will be trapped as a bareword under strict, and what will not.) But when you do that, the module could do absolutely anything it wanted to.

Comment on Re (tilly) 2: syntax check from within perl

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Re: Re (tilly) 2: syntax check from within perl by Matts (Deacon) on Mar 03, 2002 at 09:06 UTC
But safety wasn't the question - merely how to emulate perl -c... If you want it safe from malicious intent, we all know you're basically screwed with Perl. You can't not have it execute `use` bits, because many imports affect the compilation, like `use constant`. So either you test the compilation or you don't. I believe the author asked to do so.	[reply] [d/l] [select]