Question

So if I download and run the following code using curl, gets produces nil and doesn’t prompt anything.

str=gets
unless str.nil?
  puts str
else
  puts "gets produced nil"
end

Command being used (you can try it yourself)

curl https://raw.github.com/gist/3077534/06ea1c27f7bed38408d2662671f29ea758e2e54b/gets_test.rb | ruby

Is there a better/more common practice of doing this?

Answer 1

This may work for you:

tty = STDIN.reopen('/dev/tty')

tty.each_line do |line|
  break if line == "\n"
  puts line
end

tty.close

It does for me:

$ curl https://raw.github.com/gist/3078191 | ruby
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   106  100   106    0     0     84      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:--   153
foo
foo
foobar
foobar
now pressing enter ...
now pressing enter ...