From: Brian Candler Date: 2010-07-13T21:24:36+09:00 Subject: Re: Remote File Handling Michael Maloney wrote: > Is there a way to access files directly on remote servers the way you > can in the local environment? Can I get into a remote server from my > local machine and do things like File.ctime(my_remote_file) ? Short answer: no. Long answer: Ruby's Dir and File classes just sit on top of the file/directory operations provided by the underlying operating system. For example, Dir.pwd and Dir.chdir refer to the process's (local) current working directory. However, on some systems, if you install the right tools, you may be able to 'mount' a remote FTP or SFTP server as if it were a local filesystem, and then you can traverse that. In Linux, "FUSE" allows people to write modules which do this. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace and follow the links to FTPFS, SSHFS etc. Supplementary answer: it's also possible to abstract away local vs remote file operations to some degree, see for example open-uri.rb in the standard library. As far as I know, this hasn't been done to the level you are seeking. But feel free to have a go at implementing it yourself :-) You may find that you are stumped by the limited support for ctime / chmod / chown etc by protocols like FTP. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.