Backticks and Ruby Shell Scripting by Yar

Here are my additional notes on Ruby shell scripting from here.

1. Backticks (or back-ticks) let you do some scripting stuff a lot easier. Consider

    puts `find . | grep -i lib`
    

2. If you run into problems with getting the output of backticks, the stuff is going to standard err instead of standard out. Use this advice

    out = `git status 2>`
    

3. Backticks do string interpolation:

    blah = 'lib'
    `touch #{blah}`
    

4. You can pipe inside Ruby, too. It's a link to my blog, but it links back here so it's okay :) There are probably more advanced things out there on this topic.

5. As other people noted, if you want to get serious there is Rush: not just as a shell replacement (which is a bit too zany for me) but also as a library for your use in shell scripts and programs.