Thanks, Bernard! I had gotten as far as "echo off", but "@echo off" is much better :). I'm being dragged kickin and screamin into the nightmare world of DOS batch files... I also found that %* works like $* in unix shells. BTW, if anyone is interested, what I'm working on is some scripts for setting up montecarlo runs of simulations, and doing some post processing of log files. The simulation itself is done by some user-specified program. I'll package this up for distribution eventually, but for now, you can get my "extract" utility from http://path.berkeley.edu/~vjoel/extract Briefly, if your log file is columns of numbers with a header line prviding variable names, extract lets you use ruby expressions in those variables to select and process lines into a new file. Kinda like awk, but easier for novices to do simple things. "Bernard DelmñÆ" wrote: > > Joel, > > this definitely is *not* ruby-related, for I have seen similar > anomalies with perl and python. Apparently, when Windows relies > on a script's extension to guess which interpreter to run it > through, it doesn't properly take IO redirection into account. > You can circumvent this with a small, "driver" batch file, though: > > ----file mytest.rb---- > print "foo\n" > ----file mytest.bat---- > @echo off > ruby.exe mytest.rb %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 > -------------------- > C:\TEMP> mytest.bat > mytest.out > C:\TEMP> type mytest.out > foo > > > Why would 'test.rb' and 'ruby test.rb' behave differently? Something I > > don't understand about DOS (very possible :) ? > > Well, neither do I! > > Hope this helps, > > Bernard. > > PS: the above holds true on NT4, but I just checked on Win2000, > to discover that the problem simply does not exist on this platform. > Ah, finally a compelling reason to upgrade: the Redmontians fixed > their command-line interpreter! -- Joel VanderWerf California PATH, UC Berkeley mailto:vjoel / path.berkeley.edu Ph. (510) 231-9446 http://www.path.berkeley.edu FAX (510) 231-9512