From: z <news01.web@...>
Date: 2006-11-03T23:20:15+09:00
Subject: Using another program (Lynx) from within Ruby

I'm trying to write a script to read a list of URLS, get the HTTP response
headers and <title> (if there is a page there) from each URL, and output to
a CSV file in this format:
URL, header, <title>

I've started with something like this, using Lynx to get the headers.  The
part that doesn't seem to work is this:
`lynx -dump -head "#{line}"`  -- it doesn't want to put the url into the
#{line} within the backticks.

How do you insert a variable from Ruby into the shell command?  I'm ordering
4 Ruby books by mail today... I haven't seen anything like this in the ones
that I've browsed though.


Here is a larger section of the script:

print "Enter the location of the input file: "
    infile = gets.chomp

    # open file
    File.open(infile, "r") do |f|
      # get HTTP headers with Lynx
      output = f.each_line { |line| `lynx -dump -head "#{line}" |
grep "HTTP"` }
#      puts output to CVS file
# TODO