From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-07-26T02:45:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby and *NIX environment variables

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006, Logan Capaldo wrote:

>
> On Jul 25, 2006, at 1:25 PM, Ben Zealley wrote:
>
>> The question is this: if I call values.sh from within Ruby (with a
>> leading period) will I be able to see the updated environment variables
>> after it returns, or is this behaviour specific to when one shell
>> script calls another? (They're ksh scripts, if that information is
>> helpful)
>
> The second one, fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be. . <script>
> is the source command in ksh, it's equivalent to typing the contents of the
> shell script in the original file. Theres no why for a child process to
> affect it's parent's environment. OTOH if values.sh has simple value parts
> you may be able to parse the script with ruby to pull in the info.

i do something like this

   require 'session'

   bash = Session::Bash.new

   stdout, stderr = bash.execute 'ruby -r yaml -e"  y ENV  "'
   before = YAML.load stdout

   stdout, stderr = bash.execute '. values.sh'

   stdout, stderr = bash.execute 'ruby -r yaml -e"  y ENV  "'
   after = YAML.load stdout

   updated = after.to_a - before.to_a

   updated.each{|k,v| ENV[k] = v}

which saves you having to parse the file and works even if it's horrifically
complicated...

-a
-- 
suffering increases your inner strength.  also, the wishing for suffering
makes the suffering disappear.
- h.h. the 14th dali lama