Oct
7

Tip: Running command line / shell commands in Ruby using %x

Hey there, Thought I’d let you know there are a few different ways - I didn’t know about %x, but it is very similar to the backtick (`). Example: `dig yahoo.com` `dig #{domain}` Double quote rules apply. Of course, I might start adopting the %x[] format for readability - unless you are using an IDE or VIM (my choice) with syntax highlighting, backticks are hard to spot.

Thanks for the comment, indeed this also works in exactly the same way. Interesting enough the syntax highlighting in RadRails doesn’t like %x[] so if you are using this, you may prefer the back tick approach i.e. @whois = `whois #{dom}`

I’m kind of a newbe, but do these operations wait for the command line/shell command to complete, ie as if you were calling the function from a shell or command line and the whois operation was complete, to return to the ruby app and execute the next line of code? Maybe this is obvious, but I haven’t seen said details specified. Thanks either way for the %x[], very helpfull

# Steve: you could start a thread and retrieve the result later.

dom = ‘clockobj.co.uk’
t = Thread.new { `whois #{dom}` }
puts “Proceed with your code…”
puts t.value

I prove the three options but i’m get the follow error: Errno::ECONNREFUSED in … What i am doing bad?? i prove exec command too and the server shut down after execute the command.

Tanks