title: Csh eval statement?
body: <p>I'm trying to understand how the eval statement works. Here's a snippet of code I'm looking at that I don't understand:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    eval `$SOME_DIR/util/dbget.pl \
            VARIABLE1 \
            VARIABLE2 \
            VARIABLE3 \
            VARIABLE4 `
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Anyways my initial idea after some research is that eval just literally types in those strings in the command line, meaning it runs the .pl script, then... I'm not sure what it's doing with those variables. The comment above this code said "get a few parameters" but I'm not sure what that means. </p>
  
  <p>Does eval 'VARIABLE' initialize the variable? This seems to be the case because after the eval the code goes on to use these variables as if they're now initialized (does if statement checks, etc). </p>
  
  <p>I'm clearly new to this kind of scripting and just jumping into a large repository. Thanks for any help. </p>