From: Eric Armstrong <Eric.Armstrong@...>
Date: 2006-07-18T12:39:31+09:00
Subject: Uh oh. In a corner. Need help.

My rakefile needs to abort when an html
file can't be parsed into REXML, so I
can report the error and fix it. But...

Running tidy in a subshell, I can find
no way to access the error message it
sends to std error. I can see it, but
is there a way to get ruby to see it?

This idiom doesn't seem to work

    sh "tidy ... > file" do |ok, res|
      if !ok then
        # Never runs
      end
    end

The "result" is an empty string. Std out
goes to the file, as expected, but std
error does not go to res.

Trying to run htree instead, I have some
strange ".so not found" error that I
posted last week, but am unable to decipher
on my own. (Of necessity, ruby is in a
non-standard location, and that seems to be
causing difficulties.)

I need a workaround, or a different strategy.