From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-08-10T09:29:03+09:00
Subject: Re: access built-in shell commands like 'history' or 'fc'

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006, Morton Goldberg wrote:

> On Aug 9, 2006, at 3:30 PM, bwv549 wrote:
>
>> How do I access built-in shell commands (like 'history' or 'fc') with a
>> system call?
>> 
>> Not what I was expecting:
>>   % ruby -e 'puts `history`'
>>       -e:1: command not found: history
>> 
>> But this works fine:
>> 
>>   % ruby -e 'puts `pwd`'
>>       /home/john
>> 
>> I've tried this:
>> 
>>   % ruby -e 'system "history >tmp.tmp"; puts IO.read("tmp.tmp")'
>> 
>> And no errors are generated, but there is nothing in tmp.tmp, either.

that's because each call starts a __new__ shell so you won't have any history!

see my post about session.

-a
-- 
to foster inner awareness, introspection, and reasoning is more efficient than
meditation and prayer.
- h.h. the 14th dali lama