Have a list of approved subroutines:

my %table = (
  fred => \&fred,
  barney => \&barney,
  betty => \&betty,
  wilma => \&wilma,
);
...
my $func = "betty";
$table{$func}->(@args); # call betty(@args);
[download]

This ensures that $func can't go wild and execute metafunctions that aren't part of the plan. And this does work under use strict.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker