I've actually already written a node on this here - Sorry, I just wanted to see how merlyn felt when he could do this :-)

On to your specific questions, in addition to chip's excellent comments, the end solution will come down to how much freedom you really want to give to these plug-ins. Another solution which you may want to look at would be to use Safe to limit allowed operations. This module allows the creation of compartments in which unsafe Perl code can be evaluated with a new namespace and operator mask - The advantage that this offers is that the evaluated code can only do what you want it to do and cannot change variables outside its own scope (unless explicitly shared).

 

perl -e 's&&rob@cowsnet.com.au&&&split/[@.]/&&s&.com.&_&&&print'

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.