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Please don't do this. There are proper debuggers for Ruby that you can use to accomplish everything described here and more, and all without opening gaping security holes or beating the metaprogramming facilities in Ruby to a bloody pulp.

Also, I vote for Ruby's new motto to be: "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

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I like to say, "There's more than one way to do it, but your way is wrong."

"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

In particular, this Applies to Eval.

For some small applications, it can be handy to eval a configuration file that is simply a language data structure. It's like having a built-in config file parser. It also gives to lots of flexibility with your hacks :)

Some languages are nice enough to provide functions that parse the text into native data without the need for evaluation (like erlang's erl_parse/erl_scan; I guess lisps can do the same)

That's why I said "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" and not "Don't even think about it". 'eval' exists for a reason, and there are certainly good reasons to use it. This is not one of them.

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