Argh! Please stop telling people to eval user supplied strings! The *ONLY* time it is safe to use eval is if all the contents are generated by you and NONE of the components come from user input. It looks here like original_string comes from user. Imagine if I supplied this: " => 'lame'; `rm -rf /` # On 9 Mar 2006, at 12:03, Marcin Miel¥Ê¥·y¥Ê§Ôki wrote: > Nick Snels wrote: >> Hi, >> I get a string inputted in my program, which I convert to a hash- >> like string, like: >> sql = '"table_alias" => [],"original_string" => "select * from >> table"' > > The simplest, although slow: > > sql = '"table_alias" => [],"original_string" => "select * from table"' > hash = eval('{'+sql+'}') > > > lopex >