Re: [plt-scheme] eval question

[John Clements <clements@brinckerhoff.org>]

At 11:39 PM +0200 6/5/02, Sebastian H Seidel wrote:
>  > > why it is
>>  > considered evil (or at least bad form) to use eval outside of a
>top
>>  > level REPL?
>>
>>  I think it is fine as long as you execute the quoted code in a fresh
>>  environment.  If you execute it in the same environment your program
>
>>  is operating in, you can be in for some nasty surprises as it grabs
>>  your local variables.
>
>I found that very practical when saving the settings of a program (the
>installer of the matlab-interface i wrote lately) to the hard-disk. If
>they are needed again I simply do
>
>(with-input-from-file path
>   (lambda ()
>     (eval (read))))
>
>Sebastian

Not only does this strike me as a bad idea from a 
thinking-about-your-program-and-documenting-it-clearly standpoint, 
it's also a staggering security problem.

john "but I'm the only one who will ever run this code!" clements