SPUG: Piping a file to perl to execute

[David S. Patterson]

I'm trying to kludge together a strategy to protect some perl source code from
prying eyes (this would be on a Unix-like system).

I'm thinking of a solution in which a simple compiled front-end program reads
an encrypted text file, decodes it internally into a perl script, and then
execs or launches the perl executable and somehow provides the decoded perl
script to it.  The point is that the decoded perl script must never become a
temporary file that a "casual user" could edit.  I think that temporary pipe
files would be fine, finding and opening those is not "easy".

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions about this?

Is it possible to "pipe" a file to perl and have it execute it?  Can it be
done with the right command line switch?

e.g.:  $ cat foo.pl | perl

Thanx,

-Pat