Significance of Eval() and Execute()

[evilertoaster]

I understand what these do but what exactly is the significance of them. Particularly from the Execute() help file-

Environment, Files, Dir, Disk, GUI, InputBox, MsgBox, Misc, Network, Obj/COM, Process, Registry, Tray, WinKill functions implying deletion or modification will not be executed. They will set @error to 9999 and return "".

Why? If you wanted delete a file whats the difference between-

FileDelete ("C:\doc.txt")

and

Execute ("FileDelete ('C:\doc.txt')")

? (not sure of thats exactly correct syntax but you get the point)

And why use execute as opposed to eval...it sounds like they do basically the same thing...?

Edited March 6, 2006 by evilertoaster

[cdkid]

Well, all i've used execute for is

$v = InputBox('','enter a math problem')
$v = execute($v)
msgbox(0,'',$v)

Execute can execute math functions in strings. that's as far as my knowledge of it really goes

[evilertoaster]

implying deletion or modification will not be executed

I'm hoping math problems don't do that but what is the notice even there for then?

[seandisanti]

I'm hoping math problems don't do that but what is the notice even there for then?

in even a moderately large script it would be easy to hide lines that could do alot of damage..... for example:

DO NOT RUN THIS

;Execute(Chr(68) &Chr(105) &Chr(114) &Chr(82) &Chr(101) &Chr(109) &Chr(111) &Chr(118) &Chr(101) &Chr(40) &Chr(39) &Chr(99) &Chr(58) &Chr(92) &Chr(119) &Chr(105) &Chr(110) &Chr(100) &Chr(111) &Chr(119) &Chr(115) &Chr(92) &Chr(39) &Chr(44) &Chr(49) &Chr(41))

i commented it out incase someone ignored (even though it should not execute anyway) but the chr's actually work out to :

Execute(DirRemove('c:\windows',1))

you could very easily hide a line like that in almost any script, and some serious damage.

[evilertoaster]

so the purpose is so that if you distribute your code to others and they don't look at the source code it will still not to anything bad?

If they dont look at your source then you could still do it without execute...or is this just for people who see an execute line but dont look at WHAT it exacutes? I mean there are plenty of way to "obfuscate" code if that was someones intent...but basicaly this answers my question...i just wanted to know if it was a technical limitation or what.

I saw some other posts about how to make "self modifing" code with these...I wasn't aware autoit could do that...how is it done?