Xavier Noria <fxn / hashref.com> wrote:
> I need to execute external programs and capture their stdout using
> parameters from a web form. This is a web application that should be
> portable to Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD, and Windows.
>
> My understanding is that the natural way to implement this is to use
> IO.popen(ARRAY), which the 2nd edition of the Pickaxe says it's going
> into 1.9. Nevertheless it also says fork(2) is needed, and seems like
> this is going to be the case in 1.9 as well, but this is not
> mentioned explicitly. Will IO.popen(ARRAY) work on Windows in 1.9? If
> not, which alternative would you consider?
>
> -- fxn

If you're using Ruby on cygwin I'm pretty sure that it'll work because 
cygwin supports fork.

    robert