Sent this back when the gateway was broken, sorry
if you have already seen it.

I've seen a number of postings on how to redirect $defout or
$stdout to the trash. Here is a little method that might prove
useful. It was inspired by the "busy" method discussed in the
Programming Book. I also wanted any input on whether this
code might cause problems. Enjoy.

----------

  def trash

    begin
      defout = $defout
      $defout = File.open('/dev/null', 'w+')
      yield
    ensure
      $defout.reopen(defout)
    end

  end

----------

Wrap your code up like this.

    trash do

        # Put code that needs to trash $defout or $stdout here.

    end