From: "Swatosh, Joe R NWP" <Joe.R.Swatosh@...01.usace.army.mil>
Date: 2001-01-06T10:14:27+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:8714] RE:  Trouble with %x{} containing quotation marks

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Robert Gustavsson [mailto:robertg@swipnet.se]
>
>Joe R Swatosh wrote:
> 
>>irb(main):002:0> %x{cmd /c "cd && dir *.txt"} 
> > Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string 
> > "" 
> > irb(main):003:0> %x{cmd /c \"cd && dir *.txt\"} 
> > Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string 
> > "" 
> 
>I got the following to parse and run:
>irb(main):018:0> %x{ "command.com /c \"date\"" }
>
>But the return was
>""
>vital statistics: 
>Windows  98 2nd ed. (Yes, I use NT which is superior to 98 at work, I left
it downloading RedHat 7.0 though :-)
> > D:\Code>ruby --version 
> > ruby 1.6.1 (2000-10-05) [i386-cygwin]  
>Same as me. 
> > What obvious thing am I overlooking? 
> Why isn't the output from the date command returned?
>/rob

You may have to hit an additional return, as date expects input unless you
use the /t switch.  You're probably not seeing the output because of
buffering.  Good idea to just enclose a single command in quotes, it makes
things simpler.

I can get the output from the date command when not using quotation marks,
but when I do...

irb(main):006:0> puts %x{ cmd /c date/t }
Fri 01/05/2001
nil
irb(main):007:0> puts %x{ "cmd /c date/t" }
Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string

nil
irb(main):008:0>


Please help,  Joe Swatosh