Ruby – How to call a method from a module of an other ruby file

methodsmoduleruby

I have to Ruby files: one contains a module with some methods for statistical calculation, in the other file I want to call one of the methods in the module.
How can I do that in Ruby?

Is that the right way?

require 'name of the file with the module'

a=[1,2,3,4]
a.method1

Best Answer

Require needs the absolute path to the file unless the file is located in one of Ruby's load paths. You can view the default load paths with puts $:. It is common to do one of the following to load a file:

Add the main file's directory to the load path and then use relative paths with require:

$: << File.dirname(__FILE__)
require "my_module"

Ruby 1.8 code that only loads a single file will often contain a one-liner like:

require File.expand_path("../my_module", __FILE__)

Ruby 1.9 added require_relative:

require_relative "my_module"

In the module you will need to define the methods as class methods, or use Module#module_function:

module MyModule
  def self.method1 ary
    ...
  end

  def method2
    ...
  end
  module_function :method2
end

a = [1,2,3,4]
MyModule.method1(a)

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Ruby – How to call shell commands from Ruby

This explanation is based on a commented Ruby script from a friend of mine. If you want to improve the script, feel free to update it at the link.

First, note that when Ruby calls out to a shell, it typically calls /bin/sh, not Bash. Some Bash syntax is not supported by /bin/sh on all systems.

Here are ways to execute a shell script:

cmd = "echo 'hi'" # Sample string that can be used

Kernel#` , commonly called backticks – `cmd`

This is like many other languages, including Bash, PHP, and Perl.

Returns the result (i.e. standard output) of the shell command.

Docs: http://ruby-doc.org/core/Kernel.html#method-i-60
```
value = `echo 'hi'`
value = `#{cmd}`
```
Built-in syntax, %x( cmd )

Following the x character is a delimiter, which can be any character. If the delimiter is one of the characters (, [, {, or <, the literal consists of the characters up to the matching closing delimiter, taking account of nested delimiter pairs. For all other delimiters, the literal comprises the characters up to the next occurrence of the delimiter character. String interpolation #{ ... } is allowed.

Returns the result (i.e. standard output) of the shell command, just like the backticks.

Docs: https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/master/syntax/literals_rdoc.html#label-Percent+Strings
```
value = %x( echo 'hi' )
value = %x[ #{cmd} ]
```
Kernel#system

Executes the given command in a subshell.

Returns true if the command was found and run successfully, false otherwise.

Docs: http://ruby-doc.org/core/Kernel.html#method-i-system
```
wasGood = system( "echo 'hi'" )
wasGood = system( cmd )
```
Kernel#exec

Replaces the current process by running the given external command.

Returns none, the current process is replaced and never continues.

Docs: http://ruby-doc.org/core/Kernel.html#method-i-exec
```
exec( "echo 'hi'" )
exec( cmd ) # Note: this will never be reached because of the line above
```

Here's some extra advice: $?, which is the same as $CHILD_STATUS, accesses the status of the last system executed command if you use the backticks, system() or %x{}. You can then access the exitstatus and pid properties:

$?.exitstatus

For more reading see:

Ruby-on-rails – How to “pretty” format JSON output in Ruby on Rails

Use the pretty_generate() function, built into later versions of JSON. For example:

require 'json'
my_object = { :array => [1, 2, 3, { :sample => "hash"} ], :foo => "bar" }
puts JSON.pretty_generate(my_object)

Which gets you:

{
  "array": [
    1,
    2,
    3,
    {
      "sample": "hash"
    }
  ],
  "foo": "bar"
}

Best Answer

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