Feature #12399: Restricted, safe version of `Kernel#eval`

• Status: Feedback
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -

[sawa (Tsuyoshi Sawada)]

Kernel#eval is convenient, but sometimes, it can be a security risk, and often people crazily react against using it even when it is not dangerous.

I propose to have a restricted version of eval, which can interpret Ruby literals, but whenever there is constant assignment, variable assignment, method call, or method definition, it raises an error.

It can be used to safely accept parameters given as a string. One example use is, parameter interpretation of command line option parser can be easily be done under the assumption that the parameter is given as Ruby expression.

[shyouhei (Shyouhei Urabe)]

I doubt if such thing could be more useful than JSON or YAML... Both are more widely adopted to non-ruby CLI users like system admins.

[naruse (Yui NARUSE)]

It should be done as a gem.

[hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)]

• Status changed from Open to Feedback

[shevegen (Robert A. Heiler)]

I am neutral on this; I can see that it can be useful. Not sure if matz wants to have it though,
I guess there is a reason that "eval" is just one letter away from "evil". :D

I wanted to add only one thing though - shyouhei gave the valid comment that JSON and YAML are
more widely adopted and used, but I wanted to say that although for most people, it may not
always be interchangable. I give you an example that may be rare, and unusual - no problem,
I am not saying that it is valid for many, just one example of a slight difference.

YAML files have to be valid UTF-8 I think and perhaps UTF-16 or something. My yaml files
are mostly still invalid (I am lazy, I know). I use the old syck gem very happily which
works just fine - tenderlove and others make occasional updates to keep syck going,
which is very nice. Hiroshi Shibata is also one of the maintainers of the syck gem. :)

Anyway - I sometimes break stuff in very unusual, dumb ways. And then I may have some
problem e. g. that my yaml files do not work but I also can not get syck to install,
because "gem" requires openssl. I had this problem just today and yesterday when I
was experimenting with another openssl version.

Anyway - during the time of when gem was not working, ruby itself would still work,
e. g. I could use irb and such. So in the above example, and please again, keep in
mind, my example is dumb, partially contrived and not typical for many other people
:), in that example, the ruby internal eval variant would still work whereas the
yaml variant would not work.

This is not a good example, but my main point is just that the two, e. g. eval on
ruby core itself, or yaml, are not fully interchangable.

That does not mean that I am in favour or disfavour of the suggestion by
Tsuyoshi Sawada by the way - my main point was just to say that it is not completely
the same whether it would be yaml/json/eval. Although it may indeed be that the
use case is possibly too limited ... it has been quite a long time since I last
used eval() (I mean eval() itself ... I use instance_eval a lot). Sorry for the
length of my reply here.