Source a file into current shell using Ruby

Question

I have a Ruby script (say, genrc.rb) that generates a custom rc file (say, ~/.custom_rc). How can I source this file in to the current shell by running the ruby script?

$ ruby genrc.rb
$ # commands from the ~/.custom_rc should be available here

Andrew Marshall · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-08 01:36:42Z

3

A Ruby script (or any program, for that matter) cannot alter the shell that started it, so you’ll either have to run

source ~/.custom_rc

after running the script, or have the script also output the contents of the file to stdout, in which case you could do

source <(ruby genrc.rb)

or

eval "$(ruby genrc.rb)"

The script could also instead output the path to the written file, and you could do:

source $(ruby genrc.rb)

answered Jul 8, 2013 at 1:36

Andrew Marshall

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2 Comments

codefx Over a year ago

That's little unfortunate. But your suggested solutions will work, too. Thanks.

Andrew Marshall Over a year ago

@codefx It’s really a good thing, though, keeps programs from unexpectedly changing your environment. Only shell built-ins (e.g. eval & source) have that power, everything else is a forked process.

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