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Re: your mail

On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, Pavel Curtis wrote:

> > And finally, for completeness sake I suggest a tovalue() or fromliteral()
> > builtin.
> 
> Use eval(), as Andy pointed out.

Correct me if I'm wrong:

Using eval() for this allows the supposed "literal" to do things like 
call verbs, built-ins, etc., no matter how it is passed into eval.  Which 
means that if I don't want this to happen (for example, I'm converting a 
value given as a literal string inputted by a user and I don't want them 
to be able to do mischief by, for example, by calling someone's :tell. 
with a properly formatted string.)  Presumably, 
fromliteral/tovalue/whatever wouldn't allow this.

The alternative is to perform a check to make sure that the string is 
genuinely a literal value before passing it to eval, but even a regexp for 
this is somewhat less than trivial.

  --Chris                           cunkel@engin.umich.edu
    ResComp Network Support Technician, Bursley Hall
    "Invisibility is in the eye of the beholder."
    Home Page: http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~cunkel/
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