I could just be timid, but I would not trust myself to filter this type of input from an untrusted source. Nefarious people are sometimes smarter than me and always have more time and motivation, so I would not put this tool anywhere they could use it to elevate permissions. Sure you could swap my routine above to 
sub validate{
    my $pat = shift;
    return if $pat =~ /\(\?{1,2}\{/;
    return eval{qr/$pat/};
}

[download]
to filter out code evaluation and pattern code expressions (A bit of magic: executing Perl code in a regular expression), but I'm sure I'd miss some clever escape or exploit of the regex engine. This is the sort of thing where the feature is not worth the effort to secure it properly.

In reply to Re^2: Validating Regular Expression by kennethk
in thread Validating Regular Expression by Anonymous Monk

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