From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2004-10-02T18:49:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby as a shell (was Re: irb: a great tool in it's own right)

On Sat, Oct 02, 2004 at 04:30:58AM +0900, Eivind Eklund wrote:
> I don't want all Ruby programs to look like shell scripts.  However, I
> find the shell script syntax very convenient for some types of
> operations - more convenient than Ruby for programs where the chief
> operations are running external commands with pipes and filters.  I
> would like to be able to embed this into Ruby programs

If it's just external commands you're running, linking them together with
stdout/stdin, then you can still just do

   a = `ls | grep a*`
or
   system("ls | grep *")

i.e. let the shell do what it's good at. Might not work if you're running
under a system which doesn't have a shell though.

Regards,

Brian.