From: dagbrown@... (Dave Brown)
Date: 2003-08-27T02:48:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby launching system apps?

In article <5AB6790A-D747-11D7-AD65-000393876156@cox.net>,
Mark Wilson  <mwilson13@cox.net> wrote:
: 
: On Monday, August 25, 2003, at 05:05 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
: 
: > On Monday, August 25, 2003, at 01:25 PM, Dan wrote:
: >> I have a UNIX machine and I want a ruby app that can launch UNIX
: >> commands like awk or sed...how would I implement this?
: >
: > The Shell module lets you invoke UNIX commands, but bear in mind
: > that doing so is inefficient,
: 
: Avoid premature optimization. If the inefficiency is a problem, 
: implement in Ruby. If it is still a problem, extend Ruby with C.

On the other hand, always think of the poor schmuck who has to
maintain your code after you're done wih it.

foo.gsub(/ook/,"blat") is way easier to read than, er,

IO.popen("sed 's/ook/blat/g') do |p|
    p.print "ook\n"
end

and it's far more obvious what you're trying to accomplish.

--Dave
-- 
    "Some call me '^F[a-z\'-]+$', but I have many names".
                                        -- Malcolm Ray