Capturing standard out?

Is there an easy way to capture standard out in Ruby, so that "puts"
throws its output into a buffer instead of just popping up on the
screen?

···

--
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org


I have a scriopt producing output for bash, for running the test spec
I plugin output into an array, more or less like this:

class Output
   @data =
   class << self
      attr_reader :data
  end
end
if $TESTING then
   def Kernl.puts *args, &blk
       Output.data << args.join("")
       Output.data << blk.call if blk
   end
end

I have also Output.data.clear in #setup of the testsuite.

HTH
Robert

···

On 3/19/07, Giles Bowkett <gilesb@gmail.com> wrote:

Is there an easy way to capture standard out in Ruby, so that "puts"
throws its output into a buffer instead of just popping up on the
screen?

--
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
http://giles.tumblr.com/

--
You see things; and you say Why?
But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?
-- George Bernard Shaw

This is exactly the problem shell IO redirection was designed to solve.

$ ruby script.rb > output

What is the use case that prevents you from using shell redirection?

Gary Wright

···

On Mar 19, 2007, at 6:18 PM, Giles Bowkett wrote:

Is there an easy way to capture standard out in Ruby, so that "puts"
throws its output into a buffer instead of just popping up on the
screen?

You can set the $stdout global variable to point to whatever object you
like, as long as it adheres to a simple interface. Kernel#puts simply
redirects to $stdout.

Cheers,
Daniel

···

On Tue, 2007-03-20 at 07:18 +0900, Giles Bowkett wrote:

Is there an easy way to capture standard out in Ruby, so that "puts"
throws its output into a buffer instead of just popping up on the
screen?

I would do it like this:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -w

require "stringio"

def capture_stdout(buffer = StringIO.new)
   saved_stdout = $stdout
   $stdout = buffer

   yield

   $stdout = saved_stdout

   buffer.string rescue buffer
end

if __FILE__ == $PROGRAM_NAME
   puts "This will be printed."
   output = capture_stdout { puts "Meanwhile, this was captured." }
   puts "This also will be printed."
   p output
end

__END__

James Edward Gray II

···

On Mar 19, 2007, at 5:18 PM, Giles Bowkett wrote:

Is there an easy way to capture standard out in Ruby, so that "puts"
throws its output into a buffer instead of just popping up on the
screen?

> Is there an easy way to capture standard out in Ruby, so that "puts"
> throws its output into a buffer instead of just popping up on the
> screen?

You can set the $stdout global variable to point to whatever object you
like, as long as it adheres to a simple interface. Kernel#puts simply
redirects to $stdout.

That is a good idea too, especially with this idiom

def xxx(..., out = $stdout)

Robert

···

On 3/19/07, Daniel Schierbeck <daniel.schierbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 2007-03-20 at 07:18 +0900, Giles Bowkett wrote:

Cheers,
Daniel

--
You see things; and you say Why?
But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?
-- George Bernard Shaw

Hey Daniel, I found an example of the $stdout technique from Matz:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/15519

That's what I ended up using, although I used $stdout and instead of
$defout, and the documentation I found said assigning to $stdout is
deprecated in favor of $stdout.reopen, which I couldn't seem to get to
work for me.

···

On 3/19/07, Daniel Schierbeck <daniel.schierbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 2007-03-20 at 07:18 +0900, Giles Bowkett wrote:
> Is there an easy way to capture standard out in Ruby, so that "puts"
> throws its output into a buffer instead of just popping up on the
> screen?

You can set the $stdout global variable to point to whatever object you
like, as long as it adheres to a simple interface. Kernel#puts simply
redirects to $stdout.

Cheers,
Daniel

--
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org

http://giles.tumblr.com/

I have no idea, I'm solving this for somebody I work with, but I'm
pretty confident they're familiar with shell redirection already.
Thanks tho.

···

On 3/19/07, Gary Wright <gwtmp01@mac.com> wrote:

What is the use case that prevents you from using shell redirection?

--
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org

http://giles.tumblr.com/

Here's a code snippet from my log library.

gegroet,
Erik V. - http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/

···

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

["$stdout", "$stderr"].each do |std|
   io = eval(std)
   old_write = io.method(:write)

   class << io
     self
   end.module_eval do
     define_method(:write) do |text|
       unless text =~ /^[\r\n]+$/ # Because puts calls twice.
         File.open("logfile.log", "a") do |f|
           f.puts [std[1..-1].upcase, caller[2], text].join(" ")
         end
       end

       old_write.call(text)
     end
   end
end

$stdout.puts "text on stdout"
$stderr.puts "text on stderr"

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