From: Julian Leviston <julian@...>
Date: 2008-04-09T10:33:44+09:00
Subject: Re: call console command and return as string...problem

That kind of depends on the executable you're running.

if you do @results = %x{ls} what do you get (assuming you're on a unix)

Julian.

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On 08/04/2008, at 11:14 PM, Marc Hoeppner wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am trying to use the following line of code in a rails application,
> but I dont think my problem has anything to do with rails, but with
> ruby, so this is why I post it here. To set the scene - I am  
> programming
> an application for biological sequence analysis (among other  
> things...).
>
> I want to pass the contents of an array (DNA sequences) to an external
> program. This program, however, needs a file as input and doesnt  
> seem to
> take input from STDIN (its written in C so I have no clue how to mess
> with its code to change that..).
> So instead I write the sequences into a file and pass the name to the
> program. So far so good. But if I run it like this
>
> @result = %x{program-executable -o infile.txt}
>
> the variable @result is empty (should be a string, right?). If I call
> the exact same command from the command line, it prints the output to
> the screen, so I figured that it should go into the @result variable,
> no?
>
> Any suggestions on what I am doing wrong? Also, if by chance, anybody
> has an idea on how to pass the variable to the program instead of  
> going
> via the route with a physical file, I'd be glad to hear it.
>
> Cheers,
> Marc
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>