Thanks for all the help everyone. Someone from the rails forum gave me 
what seems like the simplest solution...here's what he wrote:

The problem you have is an HTML one, not a ruby one.

Basically, HTML ignores a \n unless it is inside a <pre> </pre> tag.

So, you can do this instead:

<pre>
<%= processes %>
</pre>
And it should work fine.

Also your Ruby code can be just:

def processes
`ps -el`
end

To get the same result.  You don't need all that splitting or 
assignments or even return command.

----------------

thanks again for all the good ideas.

jackster


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