Ruby > Shell Scripts By Tristan Hume 

Ruby without the web! Automate ALL the things! 

Ruby + Unix = :D 

A Smooth Transition ● Backticks: `ps -ax`.lines.map(&:split) ● Handy Methods: ○ File.foreach("words.txt") {|line| puts line.capitalize} ● Dir[]: ○ Dir['**/*.rb'].each {|file| code_files << file } 

But I like all those little utilities... 

Have No Fear: FileUtils is here! require "fileutils" FileUtils.cp some_file, some_file + ".bak" FileUtils.rm_rf "trash" FileUtils.ln_s 'verylongsourcefilename.c', 'c', :force => true FileUtils.chown nil, 'bin', Dir['/usr/bin/*'], :verbose => true 

In Which Ruby's Scripting Prowess Becomes Fully Apparent. += :Ruby_Awesomness 

My All-Time Favorite Little Gem gem install progress 

Computing: 12.35% (ETA: 2.4m) >> data.map.with_progress("Computing...") {|item| ... 

Awesomeness Comes In Many Forms data.with_progress do |item| data.with_progress.map do |item| # Any enumerable and any enumerable method (1..100000).with_progress.each_cons do |item| 10.times_with_progress('Counting to 10') do |i| (1..10).with_progress('Outer').map do |a| (1..10).with_progress('Middle').map do |b| # Nesting! end end 

An exhilarating wrapper for all things shell. (you can use IRB as your login shell if you really want to...) gem install rush 

require 'rush' file = Rush['/tmp/myfile'] file.write "hello" puts file.contents file.destroy puts Rush.my_process.pid puts Rush.processes.size puts Rush.bash("echo SHELL COMMAND | tr A-Z a-z") puts Rush.launch_dir['*.rb'].search(/Rush/).entries.inspect # Remote Execution local = Rush::Box.new('localhost') remote = Rush::Box.new('my.remote.server.com') local_dir = local['/Users/adam/myproj/'] remote_dir = remote['/home/myproj/app/'] 

Another hardcore Ruby shell. gem install chitin 

$ chitin ~/src/chitin % ls ~/src/chitin % ll = ls -:al ~/src/chitin % hg.stat ~/src/chitin % hg.stat | wc | L {|i| i.size } ~/src/chitin % git.status > '/tmp/test.out' ~/src/chitin % 44 - 2 ~/src/chitin % _ + 5 ~/src/chitin % wget "http://thume.ca/" ~/src/chitin % _ # run the same command again # You can also use Chitin as a library Shell Commands in Valid Ruby 

Better than no GUI at all. Bonus: Crappy Tk GUIs 

"This is all crappy Unix stuff, what's in it for me?" - Possibly some audience member Using Windows? 

WIN32OLE FTW! require 'win32ole' excel = WIN32OLE.new('Excel.Application') excel.visible = true workbook = excel.Workbooks.Add(); worksheet = workbook.Worksheets(1); worksheet.Range("A1:D1").value = ["North"," South","East","West"]; worksheet.Range("A2:B2").value = [5.2, 10]; worksheet.Range("C2").value = 8; worksheet.Range("D2").value = 20; 

Thank God. Never touch Visual Basic for Applications Again! 

In which WIN32OLE and Tk GUI saves the day. Case Study 

TL;DR ● Ruby has awesome utilities for scripting ● There are some great gems like "progress" to help. ● Never touch Visual Basic or Bash Scripting again, you won't regret it. 

Tristan Hume http://thume.ca/ Thanks