eval is a function that lets you execute a block of code, but it can be mighty tricky and I suggest you read up on it first. Of special use is $@, or EVAL_ERROR, which you can read about in perlvar, here.

I know that I did things which I thought made sense while I was starting out, and later realized were pretty dangerous because I wasn't checking $@, so I had no clue what was being spit out of the blocks I was trying to execute.

It's also really important to understand __DIE__ , but you'll get that feeling when you read the eval docs.

good luck,
--au