How to run Ruby/Python scripts from inside PHP passing and receiving parameters?

Question

I need to turn HTML into equivalent Markdown-structured text.

OBS.: Quick and clear way of doing this with PHP & Python.

As I am programming in PHP, som

Answer 1

In Python, have PHP pass the var as a command line argument, get it from sys.argv (the list of command line arguments passed to Python), and then have Python print the output, which PHP then echoes. Example:

#!usr/bin/python
import sys

print "Hello ", sys.argv[1] # 2nd element, since the first is the script name

PHP:

The procedure should be basically the same in Ruby.