Launching C executable via ruby script on Ubuntu server

Question

I have a situation I need some assistance with. It involves ruby, rails, and a native c applications running on an Ubuntu server.

I am able to compile the c applications on the server and now need to know how to launch them via ruby script.

My end goal is to take lists of data from a rails app, save them to a specific .dat file on the server, use this file as the input to my executables (along with flags), and load the resulting files back through a ruby script into my rails app for display.

I'm currently looking at these to start:

Confirm existance of executable (script, bat, cmd, exe) via a ruby file

Launch a script on a separate server from a Rails app

Confirm existance of executable (script, bat, cmd, exe) via a ruby file

Ruby require_relative executing script?

If anyone has done anything like this or has ideas of how to do it please advise.

In ruby you can run native code surrounded with back tick characters ` ls /home. So then you need write parser that will parse result from previous code and create your ruby models. — hawk
– hawk, Commented Aug 16, 2013 at 3:30

Serj · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-16 06:07:25Z

3

You can do like this

original_file_path = 'path/to/original_file.dat'
modified_file_path = 'path/to/modified_file.dat'

File.write(file_path, 'data')

#this will return an output from c program
#use this if you need to parse output from c program
result = `some_c_executable --some_flag #{file_path}`
#parsing result...
data = File.read(modified_file_path)
#work with data

Or

#if you don't need output from c program, use "system"
#it returns you true or false according to success
result = system "some_c_executable --some_flag #{file_path}"
if result
  data = File.read(modified_file_path)
  #work with data
else
  ...
end

answered Aug 16, 2013 at 6:07

Serj

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1 Comment

rjd Over a year ago

This pretty much answers my question. Thanks Serj!

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