I have a large CGI system that my company uses that I developed for generating dynamic webpages. This system is large and has been developed by me over a few years. The website that it runs on will soon be webmastered by a perl novice who does not want to mess with my system.

Here is my question: the script I wrote is run everytime a request is sent for this particular domain. To allow this new webmaster to add functionality to the system without having to edit the main file, I wanted to allow him to write special files (with a certain extension or some identifier) that are just perl files that the system would search for upon every execution, and if it found them, execute. I was thinking about just slurping the whole 'plugin' file and then eval-ing it.

Now, as long as he knows what he is doing and writes conservative and clean code, and as long as I come up with some way of making sure that the file is written by him and not by someone else (some kind of passcode or something - that is not important), is it safe to do what I am planning, ie: using eval to execute whole files like this?

It seems like it should work as long as I make sure to watch @! and what have you, but I just wanted to ask the best perlites I know what they thought. Thanks a bunch for your help!!

R.Joseph

In reply to Using eval to create 'plugins' by r.joseph

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