Windows and Ruby - Not very good friends?

Ruby
1

I am new to Ruby and RoR, so pardon me if I ask naive questions.

Ruby on Windows just does not feel right to me. Primarily, I develop in
Linux, mostly in Fedora. Though, I have Ubuntu installed on some
machines as well. I do get stuck in Linux too, mostly due to my lack of
knowledge and experience with Ruby and RoR, but have much better batting
average finding my way around the problems. I have a dual boot machine
with Windows and Fedora. So I decided to go through the “Programming
Ruby” book on the Windows side just for the heck of it – I keep running
into problems that I have no idea how to fix.

Here is another one:

This is a little program out of the PickAxe book (2nd Edition) on page
108.

opfile_name = “C:\RubyPrograms\PickAxeBook\testfile”
socket = $stdin
op_file = File.open(opfile_name, “w”)
begin
# Exceptions raised by this code will
# be caught by the following rescue clause
while data = socket.read(512)
op_file.write(data)
end

rescue SystemCallError
$stderr.print "IO failed: " + $!
op_file.close
File.delete(opfile_name)
raise
end

When I run it, a nice little DOS window opens up with
C:\ruby\bin\ruby.exe it its title bar and the cursor just waits. I
cannot type, cannot CNTRL-C, except close it by clicking on the top
right hand corner X box. When I do, ruby quits with the following
message:

ruby ex0261.rb
Exit code: -1073741510

How does one go about debugging this? I can’t even tell which line of
the code the program is hung-up at?

I can see that windows/ruby is creating the testfile in the directory
which has zero bytes. I thought that the line socket = $stdin assigns
standard input to this input stream which we call socket. Therefore, am
I not supposed to be able to type into the Waiting DOS window that opens
up? Is this not the Standard Input?

I haven’t tried to run this in Linux yet, but something tells me that I
am better off in that environment? May be my lack of
experience/knowledge?

Please advise.

Bharat

2

On 2/10/07, Bharat R. [email protected] wrote:

into problems that I have no idea how to fix.
# Exceptions raised by this code will
end
How does one go about debugging this? I can’t even tell which line of
the code the program is hung-up at?

I can see that windows/ruby is creating the testfile in the directory
which has zero bytes. I thought that the line socket = $stdin assigns
standard input to this input stream which we call socket. Therefore, am
I not supposed to be able to type into the Waiting DOS window that opens
up? Is this not the Standard Input?

Well… I couldn’t duplicate your problem at first. I copied and pasted
your code and it ran fine on my machine (after I changed the path). It
even
seems to have done what it was supposed to - opened the file, wrote 512
chars to it etc. (btw, how would one cause the exception to be raised?
invalid characters?)

Then I realized you might be trying to do it from within SciTe. try
doing
it from a command prompt.

3

On Feb 10, 7:27 pm, Bharat R. [email protected] wrote:

# be caught by the following rescue clause

the code the program is hung-up at?

Please advise.

Bharat

–
Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Bharat,

Don’t give up on Ruby on Windows so quickly. I’ve been using it on
Windows for years, but maybe I just don’t know what I’m missing…

Anyway, when I tried that code, everything worked fine. What version
of ruby are you running and on what version of Windows?

You should be able to type in the terminal that comes up. $stdin
isn’t be redirected.

If you can get that working, I found that changing the while block to:

while data = socket.read(1)
op_file.write(data)
op_file.flush
end

better demonstrates the apparent point of this program (writing $stdin
to a file), as the buffer gets flushed as often as you hit enter. 512
bytes seemed excessive.

Chris

4

Bharat R. schrieb:

…

ruby ex0261.rb
Exit code: -1073741510
…

This is a typical problem when running a program from inside “SciTE” and
and an
input request occurs. This exit code “-1073741510” will be produced by
the
one-liner “gets”.

In this case it is necessary to open a windows console and start the
program by
"ruby " or simply by typing “.rb” (the program name
including
the extension), because the extension is registered an ruby will be
started
automatically.

But - the shebang will NOT work in a windows environment at all.

Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner

5

On Feb 10, 7:27 pm, Bharat R. [email protected] wrote:

# be caught by the following rescue clause

the code the program is hung-up at?

Please advise.

Bharat

–
Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.

I just saw Jason M.'s response in ruby-talk-google. I bet he’s
right about running it via SciTE. Try running it from the command
line.

6

On 2/11/07, Vincent F. [email protected] wrote:

what is the equivalent to isNaN in ruby?

Float#nan?

7

what is the equivalent to isNaN in ruby?

8

Bharat R. schrieb:

However, I don’t know how
to signal the termination of the standard input.

It is +Z or +D in a Windows console (I don’t know which one,
both
work in the example below).

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\wolfgang>ruby
puts “hello”
^Z
hello

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\wolfgang>ruby
puts “hello”
^D
hello

Wolfgang, you wrote:
“the shebang will NOT work in a windows environment at all.”
You mean in: $stderr.print "IO failed: " + $!
right?

No, I mean the typical first line in Unix/Linux programs, which start
the
correct interpreter automatically. This kind of invocation does not work
in a
Windows environment.

Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner

9

Thanks Wolfgang.
Bharat

10

Gents,
First, thank you all for your time and quick responses. I am beginning
to see why people are flocking to ruby besides the language itself and
the RoR framework. It is the wonderful community help eco-system
surrounding it. May be with your help, I can come up to speed and start
helping others.

Second, you are right. I am running it from SciTe. In Linux world, I
am more comfortable at the shell prompt and open up a number of shell
windows. Moreover, I am always editing with either vim or sometimes
gedit and as a result, running the ruby programs from the command
prompt. That has to be the reason why I haven’t run into these kinds of
obscure problems yet, especially dealing with standard input/output.

I ran the program from the command prompt and it waits for my input and
I can type on the terminal as much as I want. However, I don’t know how
to signal the termination of the standard input. I tried CTRL-C which
is obviously the termination of the program. since I see that in the
stack trace as follows:

ex0261.rb:7:in `read’: Interrupt
from ex0261.rb:7

The seventh line of the code in the program above is:

while data = socket.read(1)

Chris, as you suggested, I changed the buffer count to 1 instead of 512,
but still no go. I type the text and hit the enter key but windows just
waits for me to enter text. I guess it boils down to generating end of
the input signal to windows. In unix/linux it is CTRL-D, which does not
work in windows.

Wolfgang, you wrote:
“the shebang will NOT work in a windows environment at all.”
You mean in: $stderr.print "IO failed: " + $!
right? Is there any other way I can write something which works in both
Windows and Linux in a cross-platform manner?
Thanks again and regards to you all.
Bharat

11

Follow-up question for Chris, Wolfgang, and anyone else who has
experience in this matter. Chris, you wrote above:

“Don’t give up on Ruby on Windows so quickly. I’ve been using it on
Windows for years, but maybe I just don’t know what I’m missing…”

I was primarily interested in “mildly” testing Ruby cross-platform
claims something similar to Java (I come from the Java world) and Perl
(I am not a Perl programmer, though have a healthy respect for its
capabilities. I do Bash and Ksh however). Moreover, my interest in
Ruby is motivated by a desire to get up to speed in Ruby on Rails which
I intend to use do develop database driven web applications on
open-source platforms. My question to you all is: have you found a
good reason (or reasons) to use Ruby on Windows to do any real
commercial work? Or is it because Windows is so all pervasive? I
guess I am looking for some real-life examples of how Ruby is helping do
some heavy-lifting in the Windows world. Just curious.
Bharat

12

Bharat R. schrieb:

My question to you all is: have you found a
good reason (or reasons) to use Ruby on Windows to do any real
commercial work?

Well, I started to build some libraries and techniques for textual
analysis. To
describe details will be to much for here (in addition I am too lazy up
to now
to write there a lot about it) - the ideas were taken from longer
experience
with software adaption and maintenance tools which were build long ago
in Berlin.

Ruby’s “irb” is a very helpful tool, together with Ruby’s flexibility to
change
classes in the middle of a session, and all capabilities to define
Methods for
some objects. This makes it possible to build dynamic categories of
object
groups, in addition to the class hierarchy.

These techniques will the be used for textual data analysis and
systematic
editing. It is clearly necessary to have this available for the
platforms
customers will use,…

Or is it because Windows is so all pervasive?

… and usually Windows PCs are present everywhere.

Wolfgang Nádasi-Donner

13

On 2/11/07, Bharat R. [email protected] wrote:

My question to you all is: have you found a
good reason (or reasons) to use Ruby on Windows to do any real
commercial work? Or is it because Windows is so all pervasive?

It depends on whether the output of your effort is (1) a Ruby
application
that you ship to windows clients or whether (2) Ruby is used in the
development of windows-deployed apps (i.e. in automated testing,
development tools, but Ruby code is not shipped to customers).

For (2) Ruby is great. Really great for all the reasons you have already
discussed.

For (1) though, Ruby is a bit of a mixed bag. Client applications
require
a mix of windowing kits, and this can make for some very byzantine
installation options. In general, if it doesn’t look like windows on a
windows
OS that works against you.

Rails hosting on windows doesn’t appear to have
the scalability of the Unix options, and you will have to work harder
to get it. You also miss a lot of the interesting stuff available to
Unix
railsers (like an easier-to-install RMagick (basically graphics), and
good stuff like Capistrano). A Rails corporate intranet application
could be quite successful on Windows hardware, but if your company
is large I would just host it on Unix hardware.

14

On 2/11/07, Bharat R. [email protected] wrote:

My question to you all is: have you found a
good reason (or reasons) to use Ruby on Windows to do any real
commercial work?

I work in a windows world. I learned ruby to attempt to automate my
job,
but in doing so, I learned that ruby was so intuitive I could attempt to
jump from doing tech support to programming.