Convert Ruby code to string

Question

I am refactoring some code that I did not write, and I found a line that looks like this (it is much longer, i used just a little bit for this example):

system("rubyw -e \"require 'win32ole'; @autoit=WIN32OLE.new('AutoItX3.Control');")

To increase readability, I refactored it to

do_something =
  "rubyw -e \"
    require 'win32ole'
    @autoit=WIN32OLE.new('AutoItX3.Control')"
system do_something

Then I wanted to make some changes, but since the code I am working on is in a string, I loose syntax highlighting, parenthesis matching and all that good stuff.

Is there an easy way to write some code outside of the string and then convert it to string?

I have searched the web and stackoverflow, but could not find the answer.

For more information, take a look at original code at bret/watir (Watir::FileField#set, line 445), and my fork at zeljkofilipin/watir (lines 447-459).

Answer 1

Well, you could just put the code into an external file and load that.

Alternatively, if I remember correctly, Ruby files may contain DATA sections:

# Sample ruby file:

puts DATA.readline()

__END__
foo bar

This should print "foo bar". You could put your code in the data segment. With any luck, your editor will still provide syntax highlighting for the DATA segment.

Answer 2

You can use the following syntax:

do_something = <<SOMETHING
  rubyw -e 
  require 'win32ole'
  @autoit=WIN32OLE.new('AutoItX3.Control')
SOMETHING

Apparently it's a heredoc! You can find another example here(doc).

That's not to say that the command won't freak out about having line breaks in there. However you could likely run it by system do_something.split(/\r\n/).join('') or something like that.

Answer 3

Ruby2ruby sounds kind of like what you're asking.

seattlerb.rubyforge.org/ruby2ruby/