reminds me of people writing IRC bots doing something like: if $line =~ m/!calc (.*)$/ { return eval $1; } which is about the worst possible w

reminds me of people writing IRC bots doing something like: if $line =~ m/!calc (.*)$/ { return eval $1; } which is about the worst possible way you can easily write a calculator :P In fact, irc bot/script writing is a great place to learn about security and generally distrust of the rest of humanity. Even things like the pathological regex backtracking DoS from the other day turn up fairly regularly with popular bots.