

Using popen also means that your external command will run on its own process, so you don’t have to run it on a thread. This r variable is an IO object, this means that you can write & read from it like a regular file. In the following example I use the popen method to launch an irb process, then send some input to it & read the output. Then the IO.popen method is what you are looking for.
Ruby process monitor how to#
How to Use the Popen Method For Two Way Communication With An External Program If you use exec without fork you’re going to replace your current process. This will run ls on another process & display its output.īecause this command is running in another process it will not block your Ruby app from running like the system method or %x. This is a popular pattern in the Unix world. Note: The fork method is not available on Windows. How to Use Fork + Exec To Run External Commands On a Separate Processįorking makes a copy of your current process (your Ruby app) then you can replace that copy with another process using exec. Notice that you still have to wait for the command to finish unless you run it inside a thread. These two examples will return a string with the output of the ls command. If you want to get the output from the command you’re running, instead of displaying it then you can use %x or the Kernel#` method. This will not change the current environment of your Ruby application. If you want to pass a specific environment variable to an external command you can use a hash as the first argument. If you want to use these special characters as they are pass the arguments as the 2nd argument of system. The * is replaced with the list of files before the command runs. This will print every file & folder in the current directory. Shell expansion is when the shell (sh/bash/zsh) takes some special characters ( *, ?, and [) from your command & expands them into a file list. When you run an external command with system you’ll get the “shell expansion” effect.
Ruby process monitor code#
This status code can give you more information about why the command failed. You can get the exit status code of the last external command that you ran with the $? global variable.

There are ways to run commands in the background as we’ll see later. Notice that system will print the command output as it happens.Īlso system will make your Ruby program wait until the command is done.

The Ruby system method is the simplest way to run an external command. Let’s explore these methods together! The Ruby System Method There are a few Ruby methods you can use.ĭepending on the method you use you’ll get different results. …like wkhtmltopdf to convert an HTML file into a PDF. If you want to run an external command from Ruby…
