I'm looking for a "safe" eval function, to implement spreadsheet-like calculations (using numpy/scipy).
The functionality to do this (the rexec module) has been removed from Python since 2.3 due to apparently unfixable security problems. There are several third-party hacks out there that purport to do this - the most thought-out solution that I have found is this Python Cookbok recipe, "safe_eval".
Am I reasonably safe if I use this (or something similar), to protect from malicious code, or am I stuck with writing my own parser? Does anyone know of any better alternatives?
EDIT: I just discovered RestrictedPython, which is part of Zope. Any opinions on this are welcome.