From: Dennis Newbold <dennisn@...>
Date: 2002-04-05T06:56:58+09:00
Subject: [RCR] -- Starting a Background Process

If I'm submitting this suggestion / request in the wrong form or place,
I'd appreciate it if someone can point me in the right direction, as
I'm a little new on the mailing list, etc.  With that caveat:

I'd like to suggest an additional form of "general delimited input"
Currently, you can run a shell command with the %x form of a string,
(e.g. today = %x(date)), or by enclosing it in backticks (e.g.,
today = `date`, but there is no real convenient way to start up a
child process and let it continue on its own merry way, as you can,
for example, with most shells.  For this reason, I'd like to suggest:

  pid = %&(some_program)

The form (%&) is an easily remembered mnemonic, as most shells allow
you to run a background process by appending an '&' to the end of the
command line.  If it creates problems for the Ruby parser, of course,
any character will do as long as it does the same thing.  This type of
command could facilitate starting a child process which could communicate
with the parent (ruby) process via pipes, named pipes, files, or some
other mechanism.  It would also facilitate writing a shell program in
Ruby.  It can be easily ported to Ruby-for-Windows (via the CreateProcess
Win32 API).  perhaps the character after the '&' could be used to specify
the creation of a true daemon process (i.e., one that's not in the parents
process group).  Comments / feedback are welcome.

Dennis

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