From: Eric Wong <normalperson@...>
Date: 2011-08-21T03:09:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Accidentally killing coreutils - an idea to use ruby?

Marc Heiler <shevegen@linuxmail.org> wrote:
> Ruby still worked nicely and the tasks such as "mv", "cp" etc.. work in
> pure ruby too.

You can try un.rb in the standard library:

  ruby -run -e help

I've known about it for years but never used it directly.

> Now here is my fairly odd question - when I run something like
> "./configure" and it is checking for something like "cp", and if it can
> not find it, it will state "cp: command not found", or something, is
> there a way to somehow use ruby instead of that?

ruby -run -e cp -- [OPTION] SOURCE DEST

> Additionally, would there be a way to completely control all aspects of
> 
> system()
> 
> from within a script, so that I could associate something like "cp" with
> a specific action using ruby code instead?

You could setup a new bin directory (e.g. /opt/ruby-un/bin/)
full of files executable files like:

	---------- /opt/ruby-un/bin/cp ----------------
	#!/path/to/ruby -run
	# ARGV will be handled by cp directly,
	# no need to care for it in this script
	cp
	-------------------------- 8< -----------------

...And have /opt/ruby-un/bin in your $PATH

-- 
Eric Wong