The Myth of Sysifus (sic)

Here's a cute little snippet that makes my life a lot easier when interacting with the outside world in Ruby.

def sysify script
 script.each_line do |l|
   system l.strip
 end
end

This simple little function allows me to do things like this:

def do_shell_stuff
 begin
   sysify <<-SETUP
     # THIS IS A SHELL SCRIPT
     cat /tmp/some.junk | some | util | chain > /tmp/desired.file
     run_other_util /tmp/desired.file
     do_lots_of_other_shell_stuff
   SETUP

   # THIS IS NORMAL RUBY CODE
   lines = []
   open("/tmp/desired.file", "r") do |f|
     f.readlines.each { |l| lines << l.strip }
   end

  ensure
    sysify <<-CLEANUP
      # THIS IS A SHELL SCRIPT AGAIN
      rm /tmp/desired.file
    CLEANUP
  end
end

I can see this being particularly useful for use in Rake actions involving software builds where you may have to in one action untar a file, run ./configure, execute a make and then a make install. Doing it with repeated system calls breaks DRY seriously where using sysify puts the calls to system in one place. The only downside I can see is that error handling could start to get hairy: specifically what happens if you expect an error return that's actually a warning from an embedded command?

I'll be thinking on that last one next.