From: "David G. Andersen" <dga@...>
Date: 2004-11-21T12:13:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Having Ruby 1.8 decide on "File.open" or 'IO.popen'?

On Sun, Nov 21, 2004 at 07:41:04AM +0900, Josef 'Jupp' Schugt scribed:
> 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')

  Kernel.open("/var/spool/mail/jupp")
  Kernel.open("| /usr/bin/fetchmail")
 
> Or is there good reason *not* to do that?

If there's any user-supplied data in the string and you want to
be certain you're opening a file.  From a security standpoint,
File.open is better because it cannot spawn a sub-shell or invoke
other programs.  This only matters in certain contexts, obviously.

  -Dave

-- 
work: dga@lcs.mit.edu                          me:  dga@pobox.com
      MIT Laboratory for Computer Science           http://www.angio.net/