I'd agree with the above; also, maybe it is possible to put a thicker line between things that 'custom users' need or are allowed to change ?
Maybe offering a distinct Config file, or separating the allowed/easy to change code in front of the scripts or even distinct modules ?

If the users are really meant to tamper the very hearth of underlying algorithms and so, $_ would probably be the smallest difficulty to overcome.

Maybe you can do yet another thing, as I'm just learning from the book I mention in the signature below:
can you offer them some placeholder subs and use callbacks, so that they could easily manage their own particular code snippets within the otherwise bigger code machinery ?

Krambambuli
---
enjoying Mark Jason Dominus' Higher-Order Perl

In reply to Re^2: How to avoid $_ in grep by Krambambuli
in thread How to avoid $_ in grep by felipe

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.