Description¶ ↑

ppscr is a simple utility to pp objects and guarantee they get to the glass by writing to /dev/tty.

Example Usage:¶ ↑

require 'ppscr'
hash = { 'foo' => 'bar' }
ppscr :hash => hash

Prints to the screen (/dev/tty):

{:hash=>{"foo"=>"bar"}}

Why would you use this?¶ ↑

You probably won’t most of the time, but I’ve found it helpful in debugging scenarios when a program’s output is needed but for some reason inaccessible (e.g., redirected to an unknown or protected file, invoked by a parent that doesn’t monitor STDOUT, etc.).

To illustrate, imagine you have a program, pp_ppscr.rb:

require 'pp'
require 'ppscr'

hash = { :foo => :bar }
pp "pp :hash => hash"
pp :hash => hash
ppscr "ppscr :hash => hash"
ppscr :hash => hash

If you execute

ruby ./pp_ppscr.rb > /dev/null

The bare pp output is directed to the specified handle (in this case, oblivion), while the ppscr invocation results in output to the screen:

"ppscr :hash => hash"
{:hash=>{:foo=>:bar}}