From: Gavin Kistner <gavin@...>
Date: 2005-09-10T22:53:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Using Ruby as a preprocessor for another language

On Sep 10, 2005, at 3:26 AM, Malte Milatz wrote:

> Gavin Kistner wrote:
> [erb]
>
>> % nps.each do |thug|
>> %   _erbout << "The thug's name is: #{thug.name}"
>> % end
>>
>
> Furthermore, if erb is supposed to send its output to STDOUT,  
> there's no
> problem to simply use "puts" here.

There is if you have any literal text in your ERB file. (And if you  
don't have ANY literal text, then there's not much point in using  
ERB, is there?) For example:

require 'erb'

template1 = <<'ENDTEMPLATE'
Hello
% puts "you crazy"
World
ENDTEMPLATE

ERB.new( template1, nil, '%' ).run
#=> you crazy
#=> Hello
#=> World

template2 = <<'ENDTEMPLATE'
Hello
% _erbout << "you crazy\n"
World
ENDTEMPLATE

ERB.new( template2, nil, '%' ).run
#=> Hello
#=> you crazy
#=> World


However, you can use my patch to ERB which makes puts behave as might  
be expected/desired in the above situation. See http:// 
blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/152909 for more  
information.