From: Sard Aukary <sardaukary@...>
Date: 2006-08-11T04:40:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Start an external application - How?

Joe Percival wrote:
> David Jones wrote:
>> You could try using 'system', eg:
>> 
>> system("yourwebcamapp.exe")
> 
> system seems to want the external process to complete before continuing. 
> exec seems to wait for completion of the external process as well.  I 
> need to  start an external process and then go on to the next command 
> without waiting for the external process to complete.  It would also be 
> nice if I could capture a handle for the external process so that I 
> could check status or kill it later.

This code works for me.  If you start the process in a seperate thread 
the rest of the Ruby script will continue to execute.  To terminate it 
you need some help from the operating system by using the win32ole 
library http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/win32ole/rdoc/index.html

require 'win32ole'

program = "notepad.exe"

Thread.new {system(program)}
puts "Waiting 5 seconds before terminating " + program
sleep 5

class WIN32OLE
     def to_a
         a = []; self.each{ |p| a<<p }; a
     end
end

mgmt = WIN32OLE.connect('winmgmts:\\\\.')
process = mgmt.InstancesOf("win32_process").to_a.find{ |proc|
proc.name =~ /#{program}/ }
process.Terminate

The win32ole code was copied from a Google Groups thread.  Some others 
here might be able to talk you through it :D

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