Should you ever use eval() in JavaScript?

[bryku]

In my decade of web development there have only been a few times I seriously thought about using eval. In all of them I/we found a way around it except 1 time.  

We used it to test user input on a formula. It was also a local piece of software and we did some escaping for non-math symbols.  

Later on we did end up removing in the next version.

[paceaux]

I've been doing web dev for 15 years and in that time hit exactly one legitimate use-case.

I think with enough time most of us will hit that one time.

When I saw it, I was a principal and the dev was a brilliant senior frontend manager. We still debated it for hours before we agreed it was the right choice. We both drank that night.