eval has two purposes. If given an expression (EXPR), eval will evaluate that expression as a small Perl program. This is generally the form of eval that people term "evil," because it delays execution of the code until runtime. And is thus slow.

Given a block (BLOCK), the block will be compiled at compile-time, rather than run-time (as in the EXPR form). If an error occurs in the expression/block that you're executing, the error message will be in the $@ variable after your eval.

In other words, eval, in combination with die, can be used as an exception mechanism in Perl. For example, you can try to require a module in an eval block, then check $@ (the "exception", in this case) to see if the require has succeeded: 

eval {
    require LWP;
};
if ($@) {
    die "Can't load LWP: $@";
}

[download]

In reply to Re: help with a Perl term by btrott
in thread help with a Perl term by zdog

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.