In Ruby, can you perform string interpolation on data read from a file?

Question

In Ruby you can reference variables inside strings and they are interpolated at runtime.

For example if you declare a variable foo equals \"Ted\

Answer 1

Well, I second stesch's answer of using erb in this situation. But you can use eval like this. If data.txt has contents:

he #{foo} he

Then you can load and interpolate like this:

str = File.read("data.txt")
foo = 3
result = eval("\"" + str + "\"")

And result will be:

"he 3 he"