Bill Kelly wrote:

>>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"
> 

Ew... thanks for writing that.  I had not yet gotten to the point of 
converting my Perl shell() routine to Ruby, but this puts (ha!) me ahead 
a little bit.  I wrote the shell() routine in Perl simply as a reverse 
example; I wasn't asking how to do it in Ruby.  This "puts" you into the 
bonus round... :-)

-ceo