From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2009-02-25T22:05:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Can Ruby interact with the shell sh ?

Raimon Fs wrote:
> But he was referring using a pipe if the program was *other* than the 
> shell, and I want to interact with the shell.

IO.popen in principle should work with any external program, including a 
shell.

IO.popen("/bin/sh","r+") do |s|
  s.puts "ls /tmp; exit"
  puts s.read
end

require 'expect' to get a more convenient API for searching for 
responses.

However you need to be careful to ensure you don't deadlock, either 
because the shell is trying to send you a large amount of data but 
you're not reading it, or because you're waiting for a particular string 
which doesn't appear.

You also won't get any prompts in a non-interactive shell. You could try 
/bin/sh -i, but that may cause more problems if the shell expects to be 
connected to a pty.

I have a vague idea that there's a spawn/pty library out there, which 
you can google for. That would be safest for commands which chat 
interactively.

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