Multiple commands in shell

Ruby
1

I’m trying to run multiple commands in the shell from ruby but I can’t
seem to grasp how I keep the “state” from the previous shell command.

For example, how would I perform the following sequence of commands in
ruby:

  1. cd /dir
  2. ls

Not counting “ls /dir” that is :wink:

I’ve tried using:

system “cd /dir”
system “ls”

…but it doesn’t work.

Thanks!

2

Gu stav wrote:

For example, how would I perform the following sequence of commands in
ruby:

  1. cd /dir
  2. ls

system “cd /dir; ls”
or:
Dir.chdir("/dir") do
system “ls”
end
or even better:
puts Dir["/dir/*"]

Generally there’s no way to have the state from one system command
affect
another, but you can change the pwd with Dir.chdir and you can change
environment variables using ENV.

HTH,
Sebastian

3

Gu stav schrieb:

I’ve tried using:

system “cd /dir”
system “ls”

…but it doesn’t work.

Thanks!
Ruby provides excellent classes for this called Dir and File (and maybe
FileUtils)
RDoc can be found at:
class File - RDoc Documentation
and
class Dir - RDoc Documentation

4

Works great. Thanks a million!

5

On Jan 7, 11:14 am, Gu stav [email protected] wrote:

I’ve tried using:

system “cd /dir”
system “ls”

.but it doesn’t work.

Thanks!

Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.

[dusty@dustylaptop:~] $ pwd
/Users/dusty
[dusty@dustylaptop:~] $ ls tmp/
test.txt

irb(main):003:0> system(‘pwd; cd tmp; ls’)
/Users/dusty
test.txt
=> true

6

2009/1/7 Gu stav [email protected]:

I’ve tried using:

system “cd /dir”
system “ls”

two seperate calls do not work because every system-call creates a new
shell process. If you do a ‘cd’ the first shell does the ‘cd’ and is
then terminated.
The second system call starts a new shell process, which does not know
about the former cd.

You can call system(“(cd /dir; ls)”)

The () inside the system call executes all the commands in one shell
process.

-Thomas

7

On 07.01.2009 19:08, dusty wrote:

Not counting “ls /dir” that is :wink:
Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
=> true
Here’s another way to do it using a here document by having multiple
commands on separate lines - much the same way as in a shell script:

robert@fussel ~
$ ruby /tmp/x.rb

  • pwd
    /cygdrive/c/Dokumente und Einstellungen/robert
  • cd /tmp
  • pwd
    /tmp
  • ls
    x.rb

robert@fussel ~
$ cat /tmp/x.rb

system <<EOC
set -x
pwd
cd /tmp
pwd
ls
EOC

robert@fussel ~
$

Cheers

robert