Huh..

You've got an extra $eval() in there that's un-needed..

You also aren't taking into account the lack of existance of '%<network>' (which will go into this if, and issue a 'nick' on it's own).

That being said, it shouldn't cause anything to *stop* (in fact, I can't reproduce that).

If you are getting some sort of explosion, then it's because of something else.

Show us the entire ON CONNECT event. Also double check you aren't doing something odd in another script that has an ON CONNECT.