From: Stu Date: 2010-11-28T04:43:30+09:00 Subject: Re: How to use Ruby like shell script? backticks work very well as well and are in the bourne scripting metaphor. Interpolation (i.e. #{self} will also work inside ruby's back ticks. They will return string. to be used within the program. pipes and redirection can be used inside as so: ps = "$2" pid = `ps aux | awk '{print #{ps}}'` printf pid $$ gives you the ruby programs process id $0 returns a string of the program that is running $* will give you arg list here = <