Question

I found this line of code in the Virtuemart plugin for Joomla on line 2136 in administrator/components/com_virtuemart/classes/ps_product.php

eval ('\$text_including_tax = \'$text_including_tax\';'); 

Answer 1

Scrap my previous answer.

The reason this eval() is here is shown in the php eval docs

This is what’s happening:

$text_including_tax = '$tax <a href='...'>...</a>';  ...  $tax = 10;  ...  eval ('\$text_including_tax = \'$text_including_tax\';'); 

At the end of this $text_including_tax is equal to:

'10 <a href='...'>...</a>' 

The single quotes prevents $tax being included in the original definition of the string. By using eval() it forces it to re-evaluate the string and include the value for $tax in the string.

I’m not a fan of this particular method, but it is correct. An alternative could be to use sprintf()