I know how to run a shell command in Ruby like:
%x[#{cmd}]
But, how do I specify a directory to run this command?
Is there a similar way of shelling out, similar to subprocess.Popen in Python:
subprocess.Popen(r'c:\mytool\tool.exe', cwd=r'd:\test\local')
Thanks!
You can use the block-version of Dir.chdir. Inside the block you are in the requested directory, after the Block you are still in the previous directory:
Dir.chdir('mydir'){
%x[#{cmd}]
}
Ruby 1.9.3 (blocking call):
require 'open3'
Open3.popen3("pwd", :chdir=>"/") {|i,o,e,t|
p o.read.chomp #=> "/"
}
Dir.pwd #=> "/home/abe"
The closest I see to backtricks with safe changing dir is capture2:
require 'open3'
output, status = Open3.capture2('pwd', :chdir=>"/tmp")
You can see other useful Open3 methods in ruby docs. One drawback is that jruby support for open3 is rather broken.
:chdir option of any Process.spawn-based invokation (system, popen3,...) seems to be thread-safe for launching parallel processes, too.also, taking the shell route
%x[cd #{dir} && #{cmd}]
Maybe it's not the best solution, but try to use Dir.pwd to get the current directory and save it somewhere. After that use Dir.chdir( destination ), where destination is a directory where you want to run your command from. After running the command use Dir.chdir again, using previously saved directory to restore it.
Dir.chdir. Inside the block you are in the requested directory, after the Block you are still in the previous directory.
Dir.chdir(Dir.pwd.tap {Dir.chdir('d:\test\local'); #otherstuff}) as I wasn't aware chdir could take a blockI had this same problem and solved it by putting both commands in back ticks and separating with '&&':
`cd \desired\directory && command`
