[ruby-talk:03504] Re: Ruby to call commands, e.g. "find , perl scripts , nmap , and others" is thispossible?

I am trying to use nmap to test my own network and automate the process.
I keep seeing perl being used for this type of work , but was hopping that
may be ruby could do this with out all the lines of code needed for perl. Is
perl a better choice than Ruby for this?


Dave Thomas wrote:

> Jim <[e-mail]> writes:
>
> > I would like to use Ruby to call commands, e.g. "find , perl scripts  ,
> > nmap , and others" is this
> > possible?
>
> You have several options.
>
> The 'system' method invokes a command, waits for it to complete, and
> lets you access the exit status.
>
>    system("mt rewind")
>
> A string in backticks, or quoted using %x{xxx} is executed, and the
> standard output is returned to the caller.
>
>    users = `who`
>
>    users = %x{who}
>
> Finally, you can open a pipe are read and write to a shell subprocess:
>
>    IO.popen("ps ax") do |pipe|
>      while pipe.gets
>        print if /httpd/
>      end
>    end
>
> (or, in a more Rubyish style:
>
>    puts IO.popen("ps ax").select { |line| line =~ /httpd/ }
>
> Regards
>
> Dave