This is a cross-post from my personal blog.
Sometimes I have to do a repetitive task for a project, that would take hours if done manually. Shell commands are normally the way to go, but I've always had a hard time learning them, and after I did, I forgot them quickly, because I need them very infrequently. So I found another solution.
Scripting! Especially with interactive ruby.
For example, recently I had to rename a bunch of files, removing ".inline".
The files I had looked like this:
icon.inline.svg
logo.inline.svg
(and a bunch more)
And they should be renamed to
icon.svg
logo.svg
Okay, lets do this.
- Navigate to the directory where the files are and start the interactive ruby shell with
irb(if Ruby is installed) - Get all filenames in a variable:
irb(main):001:0> filenames = Dir.glob("*.svg")
- Rename them in a loop:
irb(main):002:0> filenames.each { |f|
irb(main):003:1* File.rename(f, f.sub(".inline", ""))
irb(main):004:1> }
Done. Quite easy, right?
Now, this is a simple use-case. Looking up a shell command wouldn't take too long.
But what if it gets more complicated?
What if the file needs to contain a special text? What if the file size has to exceed a particular limit? What if ...
You know where I'm getting at.
With Ruby, I know what to do. Just look up whatever I don't know and combine everything with the constructs I, as a developer, am familiar with.
Since I have never extensively used it, I'd have a lot more problems with shell commands/scripts. I'd need to look up how to do the subproblems (e.g. getting the file size) AND how to combine them with pipes, arrows and whatever else exists.
Additionally, Ruby statements are usually a lot easier to remember. Staying with the example of getting the file size, this is how it works with bash (accepted answer in the first Google result):
stat -f%z icon.inline.svg
With Ruby:
File.size("icon.inline.svg")
Doesn't Ruby look a lot more straightforward?
So, if you're like me and don't know how to do complex tasks with shell, give interactive ruby a chance. It will infinitely speed up those annoying repetitive tasks.
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Top comments (3)
Did not try ruby yet but after reading this article it sound promissing , i will give it a shot .
Yes bash scripts may get sometimes a little bit ugly.
But recently , i was using bashops.net , it an online tool for writing and sharing bash scripts , it also addresses all bash scripting diffeculties .
Great article , thanks man
Actually, I didn't want to make it that much about Ruby, but more about any language you can use for that purpose. I think Python might be a good fit too.
Ruby is just the language I sort of know with which I can achieve that.
And don’t forget that you can use ‘ruby -e’ to run one liners without opening irb! Nice article, thanks for sharing 😁