From: Pat Eyler <pate@...>
Date: 2002-04-26T10:32:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby as a "sh" sucessor language

On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, Gregory Benjamin wrote:

> I'm interested in using ruby as a super replacement for "sh" scripts.
> I want to do the same sort of mundane things.

Benjamin,
please tak a look at 'The Ruby Way' by Hal Fulton (SAMS, ISBN
0-672-32083-5)  it has a chapter on scripting and systems administration
which should give you a lot of what you mention below.

-pate

>
> Check command line arguments
> Make sure files exist
> Make sure files are readable
> create directories
> move files from one place to another
> temporarily change directories
> scan through files doing awk/perl pattern replacement, extraction
> write new files
> remove files
> run external commands and pipe the results
> etc.
>
> I learn best by example -- sample code is what I'm looking for,
> but a book entitled "Using Ruby as a Bourne-shell replacement"
> or something similar would be great.
>
> If I learn some OO stuff along the way that's OK too, but mostly
> I want a way to do what one normally does with sh, without using
> perl (which I've used a long time but see Ruby as a cleaner approach).
>
> Thanks
>