On Sun, 4 Feb 2007, Drew Olson wrote:

>> Where shall the result of that splitting reside? Also on the same unix
>> box where the original CSV document resides?
>>
>> Regards
>>   Thomas
>
> Yes, I'd like the split files to be on the unix box as well. Obviously,
> the easy solution is to install rails but I can't (client paranoid,
> etc). I do have ksh or perl to work with, but I have a working ruby
> script which i'd like to use. Any other ideas?

installing rails would be a twenty ton sledgehammer approach.

ruby uses stdin if no script is provided.  you need to send the script to ruby
on stdin via ssh and let it process the local file, creating local output.

here's the code

   harp:~ > cat a.rb
   input = ARGV.shift
   output = "#{ input }.out"

   open(output, 'w') do |fd_out|
     open(input) do |fd_in|
       fd_in.each do |line|
         fd_out.puts line.split(',').inspect
       end
     end
   end

here is the remote file

   harp:~ > ssh fortytwo.merseine.nu cat foo.csv
   1,2,3
   a,b,c

we spawn ruby on the remote host reading from stdin, giving 'foo.csv' as an argument and the file'a.rb' as the script to run

   harp:~ > ssh fortytwo.merseine.nu ruby - foo.csv  <  a.rb

this works as expected: the output is created on the remote host

   harp:~ > ssh fortytwo.merseine.nu cat foo.csv.out
   ["1", "2", "3\n"]
   ["a", "b", "c\n"]


hth.


-a
-- 
we can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being better.
simply reflect on that.
- the dalai lama