From: Chris Morris <chrismo@...>
Date: 2003-09-03T21:56:34+09:00
Subject: Re: [windows 9*] how to get the output of commands which contain backslashes?

I've got the following routines in a win.rb file that I always require 
when I need to do shell stuffs, and I've yet to have any problems. The 
excerpt is part of a collection of misc. stuffs you can get here: 
http://www.clabs.org/dl/clutil/. Works with 1.6/1.8. (I thought I'd read 
somewhere that these substitute routines wouldn't be needed anymore in 
1.8, but a brief attempt without them failed, so I just stuck to it -- 
it's habitual now for me to install this on each box I've got Ruby on 
and I always require it).

# MENON Jean-Francois [Jean-Francois.MENON@meteo.fr]
# http://ruby-talk.com/41583
# But I see two potential problems that make not consistent with the
# original ruby command:
# 1) it takes only one argument

# code by Hee-Sob Park - posted here:
# http://ruby-talk.com/10006
def system(command)
  # 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/vccore98/html/_crt_system.2c_._wsystem.asp
  Win32API.new("crtdll", "system", ['P'], 'L').Call(command)
end

# MENON Jean-Francois [Jean-Francois.MENON@meteo.fr]
# http://ruby-talk.com/41583
# But I see two potential problems that make not consistent with the
# original ruby command:
# 1) it always set "$?" variable to false

# code by Hee-Sob Park - posted here:
# http://ruby-talk.com/10006
def `(command)
  # 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/vccore98/HTML/_crt__popen.2c_._wpopen.asp
  popen = Win32API.new("crtdll", "_popen", ['P','P'], 'L')
  pclose = Win32API.new("crtdll", "_pclose", ['L'], 'L')
  fread = Win32API.new("crtdll", "fread", ['P','L','L','L'], 'L')
  feof = Win32API.new("crtdll", "feof", ['L'], 'L')
  saved_stdout = $stdout.clone
  psBuffer = " " * 128
  rBuffer = ""
  f = popen.Call(command,"r")
  while feof.Call( f )==0
      l = fread.Call( psBuffer,1,128,f )
      rBuffer += psBuffer[0..l]
  end
  pclose.Call f
  $stdout.reopen(saved_stdout)
  rBuffer
end

-- 

Chris
http://clabs.org/blogki