Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote: >I really don't think we should have Perl data structures in files >(that means Perl code, right?), because that indicates doing an eval,
Not necessarily. Working in *a defined subset of* Perl syntax would mean that readers have both options. Evaling would probably be acceptable in situations where you're installing the module described by the META file, so this could be a convenient option in some small installations. Stats gatherers, who don't want to run code from the module, can use a safe parser as they do now. It so happens that I have a suitable subset of Perl syntax already defined. I needed to implement it a while ago for work purposes, and now it's on CPAN, as Data::Pond. It's similar in spirit to JSON, which of course gives the same kind of parsing choice for the JavaScript language. -zefram
