Shell

Shell implements an idiomatic Ruby interface for common UNIX shell commands.

It provides users the ability to execute commands with filters and pipes, like +sh+/+csh+ by using native facilities of Ruby.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'shell'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install shell

Usage

Temp file creation

In this example we will create three +tmpFile+'s in three different folders under the +/tmp+ directory.

  sh = Shell.cd("/tmp") # Change to the /tmp directory
  sh.mkdir "shell-test-1" unless sh.exists?("shell-test-1")
  # make the 'shell-test-1' directory if it doesn't already exist
  sh.cd("shell-test-1") # Change to the /tmp/shell-test-1 directory
  for dir in ["dir1", "dir3", "dir5"]
    if !sh.exists?(dir)
      sh.mkdir dir # make dir if it doesn't already exist
      sh.cd(dir) do
        # change to the `dir` directory
	  f = sh.open("tmpFile", "w") # open a new file in write mode
	  f.print "TEST\n"            # write to the file
	  f.close                     # close the file handler
      end
      print sh.pwd                  # output the process working directory
    end
  end

Temp file creation with self

This example is identical to the first, except we're using CommandProcessor#transact.

CommandProcessor#transact executes the given block against self, in this case +sh+; our Shell object. Within the block we can substitute +sh.cd+ to +cd+, because the scope within the block uses +sh+ already.

  sh = Shell.cd("/tmp")
  sh.transact do
    mkdir "shell-test-1" unless exists?("shell-test-1")
    cd("shell-test-1")
    for dir in ["dir1", "dir3", "dir5"]
      if !exists?(dir)
	  mkdir dir
	  cd(dir) do
	    f = open("tmpFile", "w")
	    f.print "TEST\n"
	    f.close
	  end
	  print pwd
      end
    end
  end

Pipe /etc/printcap into a file

In this example we will read the operating system file +/etc/printcap+, generated by +cupsd+, and then output it to a new file relative to the +pwd+ of +sh+.

  sh = Shell.new
  sh.cat("/etc/printcap") | sh.tee("tee1") > "tee2"
  (sh.cat < "/etc/printcap") | sh.tee("tee11") > "tee12"
  sh.cat("/etc/printcap") | sh.tee("tee1") >> "tee2"
  (sh.cat < "/etc/printcap") | sh.tee("tee11") >> "tee12"

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ruby/shell.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the 2-Clause BSD License.

dangnm/shell