From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-03-27T00:53:17+09:00
Subject: Re: capturing standard out?

On Mar 19, 2007, at 5:18 PM, Giles Bowkett wrote:

> Is there an easy way to capture standard out in Ruby, so that "puts"
> throws its output into a buffer instead of just popping up on the
> screen?

I would do it like this:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -w

require "stringio"

def capture_stdout(buffer = StringIO.new)
   saved_stdout = $stdout
   $stdout      = buffer

   yield

   $stdout = saved_stdout

   buffer.string rescue buffer
end

if __FILE__ == $PROGRAM_NAME
   puts "This will be printed."
   output = capture_stdout { puts "Meanwhile, this was captured." }
   puts "This also will be printed."
   p output
end

__END__

James Edward Gray II