How do I use Ruby for shell scripting?

Question

I have some simple shell scripting tasks that I want to do

For example: Selecting a file in the working directory from a list of the files matching some regular e

Answer 1

Here's something important that's missing from the other answers: the command-line parameters are exposed to your Ruby shell script through the ARGV (global) array.

So, if you had a script called my_shell_script:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
puts "I was passed: "
ARGV.each do |value|
  puts value
end

...make it executable (as others have mentioned):

chmod u+x my_shell_script

And call it like so:

> ./my_shell_script one two three four five

You'd get this:

I was passed: 
one
two
three
four
five

The arguments work nicely with filename expansion:

./my_shell_script *

I was passed: 
a_file_in_the_current_directory
another_file    
my_shell_script
the_last_file

Most of this only works on UNIX (Linux, Mac OS X), but you can do similar (though less convenient) things in Windows.