From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2004-06-08T07:19:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie wondering about command line arguments

Paul Emmons wrote:
> And how, in general, do I make sure that a Ruby script does not try to
> use an argument as an input file name if I want it to mean something
> else?

You can modify ARGV.

$ cat >arg1
ARG1
$ cat >arg2
ARG2
$ ruby -e 'puts ARGF.read' arg1 arg2
ARG1
ARG2
$ ruby -e 'ARGV.pop; puts ARGF.read' arg1 arg2
ARG1

Note that ARGF.read is the same as calling Kernel#gets, except that it 
slurps the whole string (and I like it because it's a bit more explicit).