Table of Contents

#$EPIC: ruby_command.txt,v 1.3 2007/02/20 03:54:29 jnelson Exp $

Synopsis:

ruby {ruby statement}

Purpose:

If the client was linked with an embedded ruby interpreter, the ruby statement shall be executed by ruby. If the client was not linked against ruby, then no action shall take place.

Although every ruby statement resolves to a (ruby) scalar value, that (ruby) scalar value is discarded when you run it this way.

If the ruby statement has an error, the result is undefined, but usually an error message is output to the window.

Remember that the insides of {}s are protected from ircII expansion, so if you want to pass ircII values into your ruby script, you do best to export the value to ruby using $ruby function() first. The insides of the {} should be a literal segment of ruby code.

You can call back to the client from ruby:

EPIC.echo(string) Output something on the epic window.
EPIC.say(string) Output something with banner on the epic window.
EPIC.cmd(string) Run “string” without $-expansion
EPIC.eval(string) Run “string” with $-expansion
EPIC.expr(string) Return value of epic expression “string”
EPIC.call(string) Call an epic function: string must be of the form “name(args)”. $* will expand to the empty string.

You are permitted to register ruby END blocks. They will run when epic initiates shutdown procedures.

It is important to remember that to ruby, everything in ircII is a String object. When you use EPIC.expr(), you get a String back. If you know that the value contains an integer, you must cast it (with .to_i).

It is important to remember that ruby is less tolerant of rogue semicolons than ircII is. You do not want to mix the standard loader with ruby. Use the PF loader for everything, to avoid unnecessary insertion of semicolons.

Examples:

Assign to the epic variable $epicvar the value of the ruby variable "rubyvar"
	RUBY { EPIC.expr("epicvar=[#{rubyvar}]") }

Assign to the ruby variable "rubyvar" the value of the epic variable "epicvar"
	RUBY { rubyvar = EPIC.expr("epicvar") }

Run /EPIC_ALIAS five times, passing it each number 1 to 5.
	RUBY {
		1.upto(5) {|x|
			EPIC.cmd("epic_alias #{x}")
		}
	}

Iterate over each item in ruby collection, passing each value to epic alias:
	RUBY {
		something.each {|x|
			EPIC.cmd("epiccmd #{x}")
		}
	}

Assign a value to a local variable, manipulate it in ruby, and pass it back:
	alias booya {
		@ :epiclocal = 5
		ruby {
			rubyvar = EPIC.expr("epiclocal").to_i
			rubyvar = rubyvar + 1
			EPIC.expr("epiclocal = [#{rubyvar}]")
		}
		echo $epiclocal
	}

History:

The ruby command first appeared in EPIC5-0.3.1.