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.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'shell'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install shell

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.exist?("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.exist?(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

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

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"

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.

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

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