How does using 'require' differ from using 'eval'? The documentation of 'require' states that it is fundamentally a fancy 'do', which is just another way of saying 'eval'. It's not the "catching errors" part that worries people. It's the fact that your required file could contain stuff you didn't expect, such as a program to send your password file to some remote system.

All in all, it is probably best to not require, include, or in any way run code that is arbitrary. 'use', being a compile time thing (outside of eval, of course) is a lot safer since the code can't really be modified while the program is running.

However, if you are operating in a "clean room" environment, such as a dedicated server with strictly controlled access, where the output from Data::Dumper cannot be tampered with in any conceivable way, I would say that eval'ing that code is not as risky as some would have you believe.

The real risk comes from running on shared systems with untrusted users who may be able to "deposit" files in your dump directory since they are using the same Web server user (i.e. nobody) and then are able to execute arbitrary code.

In reply to Re^2: Undumper by tadman
in thread Undumper by ton

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.