Suppressing the output of a command run using 'system' method while running it in a ruby script

Question

I am not sure if this makes sense but I am thinking if there is a way to suppress the output shown for a command when run using the system method in ruby? I mea

Answer 1

• define null_device, it's operating systems dependent: windows 7 and newer use nul, while *nix systems uses /dev/null
• run the command
• redirect it's standard and error output to null_device
• then use the exit code, or the backtick method as mentioned by @mikej to determine the output

as follows:

 null_device = Gem.win_platform? ? "/nul" : "/dev/null"

 do method
   system "run command 1>#{null_device} 2>#{null_device} "
   p ($? == 0)
 end