gistfile1.txt

The meat of shelling out safely was figured out by @notahat.

The idea for attaching to Symbol was from http://hans.fugal.net/blog/2007/11/03/backticks-2-0/

It makes me feel ill. With awesome.

symbol.rb

class Symbol
  def [](*args)
    # a safe way to shell out
    read_end, write_end = IO.pipe
    pid = fork do
      read_end.close
      STDOUT.reopen(write_end)
      STDERR.reopen(write_end)
      exec(self.to_s, *args)
    end
    write_end.close
    output = read_end.read
    Process.waitpid(pid)
    read_end.close
    output
  end
end

usage.txt

irb(main):046:0> puts :whoami[]
glen
=> nil

irb(main):047:0> puts :ls[]
Capfile
Gemfile
Gemfile.lock
README
Rakefile
app
compass
config
db
docs
features
lib
log
public
script
spec
test
tmp
vendor
=> nil

irb(main):048:0> puts :ls['-al']
total 96
drwxr-xr-x  27 glen  staff    918 14 Sep 16:19 .
drwxr-xr-x  17 glen  staff    578 31 Aug 10:25 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 glen  staff  12292 19 Aug 18:36 .DS_Store
-rw-r--r--   1 glen  staff    564  4 Jan  2010 .autotest
drwxr-xr-x   3 glen  staff    102 27 Jul 11:30 .bundle
drwxr-xr-x  22 glen  staff    748 15 Sep 17:03 .git
-rw-r--r--   1 glen  staff    527 14 Sep 14:22 .gitignore
drwxr-xr-x  12 glen  staff    408 15 Sep 17:03 .idea
-rw-r--r--   1 glen  staff    273  2 Sep 15:26 Capfile
-rw-r--r--   1 glen  staff   1607 14 Sep 16:19 Gemfile
-rw-r--r--   1 glen  staff   5504 14 Sep 16:19 Gemfile.lock
-rw-r--r--   1 glen  staff    515 20 Aug 11:21 README
-rw-r--r--   1 glen  staff    341 20 Aug 11:21 Rakefile
drwxr-xr-x   9 glen  staff    306  2 Sep 15:26 app
drwxr-xr-x   4 glen  staff    136 30 Jun 11:22 compass
drwxr-xr-x  42 glen  staff   1428 14 Sep 16:19 config
drwxr-xr-x   8 glen  staff    272 15 Sep 15:45 db
drwxr-xr-x   4 glen  staff    136 20 Aug 11:21 docs
drwxr-xr-x  45 glen  staff   1530 15 Sep 16:00 features
drwxr-xr-x  42 glen  staff   1428  9 Sep 11:40 lib
drwxr-xr-x  16 glen  staff    544 15 Sep 15:43 log
drwxr-xr-x  31 glen  staff   1054 20 Aug 11:21 public
drwxr-xr-x  34 glen  staff   1156 20 Aug 11:21 script
drwxr-xr-x  18 glen  staff    612 15 Sep 15:45 spec
drwxr-xr-x   3 glen  staff    102 11 Aug 10:53 test
drwxr-xr-x  69 glen  staff   2346 15 Sep 15:39 tmp
drwxr-xr-x   6 glen  staff    204 20 Aug 11:21 vendor
=> nil