From: Neil Stevens <neil@...>
Date: 2004-11-21T08:33:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Having Ruby 1.8 decide on "File.open" or 'IO.popen'?

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 07:41:04 +0900, Josef 'Jupp' Schugt wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> To write to (mbox) file I use "File.open('/var/spool/mail/jupp')". To
> write to a (MDA) stream I would use "File.popen('/usr/bin/fetchmail')".
> Is there an *existing* means that I can use for both purposes so that I
> can code as follows?
> 
> SomeClass.open('/var/spool/mail/jupp')
> SomeClass.open('| /usr/bin/fetchmail')
> 
> Or is there good reason *not* to do that?

"| " are valid characters to start a filename, so how would you
distinguish what is intended?

-- 
Neil Stevens - neil@hakubi.us
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who
are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
                                                 -- Albert Einstein(?)