Question

I’m new to ruby … wondering if the following is possible:

I currently run a test app within irb (irb -r test.rb) and manually execute
various command implemented in test.rb. One of these functions is currently implemented as follows:

def cli(cmd)
  ret=$client.Cli(cmd)
  print ret, "\n"
end

Where $client.Cli() takes a string. I currently type the following in the IRB prompt
> cli "some command with parameters"

This is sent over socket and results are returned

I would like to be able to do this WITHOUT the quotes. This would be just for this command
Is there a way to do this generally in ruby? if not how would you extend irb to do this?

For those who know ‘C’ this would be like the following:

#define CLI(CMD) cli(#CMD)
CLI(Quadafi and Sheen walk into a bar...)

where the pre-processed output is:

cli("Quadafi and Sheen walk into a bar...")

Thanks

Answer 1

You could actually monkey patch the gets method of the IRB::StdioInputMethod and IRB::ReadlineInputMethod classes, and perform a rewrite if the cli method is called, by adding the following to your test.rb file:

module IRB
  def self.add_quotes(str)
    str.gsub(/^cli (..+?)(\\+)?$/, 'cli "\1\2\2"') unless str.nil?
  end

  class StdioInputMethod
    alias :old_gets :gets

    def gets
      IRB::add_quotes(old_gets)
    end
  end

  class ReadlineInputMethod
    alias :old_gets :gets

    def gets
      IRB::add_quotes(old_gets)
    end
  end
end

This way, any input line matching cli ... will be replaced with cli "..." before it’s evaluated.