> In article <8x%1d.2604$Qv5.529 / newssvr33.news.prodigy.com>,
> Chris  <ceo / nospan.on.net> wrote:
> >
> >(4) Each language has it's own strengths.  IMO one of Perl's strengths 
> >is the simplicity and consistency of it's parameter passing:
> >
> >sub shell {
> >
> >    my @output;
> >    for (@_) { push @output, `$_` }
> >    chomp( @output );
> >    return wantarray ? @output : \@output;
> >
> >}
> >

In ruby that might be,

def shell(*args)
  args.map {|a| `#{a}`.chomp}
end

...It's true you'll always get an array back.  But if
you want to splat the array such that you can assign
its individual element(s) to variables you can...

a = shell("echo 1", "echo 2")     # a => ["1", "2"]
a,b = *shell("echo 1", "echo 2")  # a => "1", b => "2"


Regards,

Bill