I wrote a short jq module for converting bytes to more human readable form.

With the same technique than in my earlier article it is also possible to capture the anonymous wrapper module that Kernel#load method with wrap=true uses to build the sandbox. This way you can load configuration or other data without polluting your namespace.

Here is statfs implementation for older Ruby releases that don’t have Fiddle:

Ruby will retire its broken Kernel#syscall method in the future. In the current Ruby releases you cannot provide NUL octets to syscalls which breaks almost all syscalls using a struct to provide parameters to it (Ruby bug 1472). Luckily starting Ruby 1.9.2 there is Fiddle standard library that can be used to call foreign functions like C-library’s functions, including the wrappers for syscalls. Unfortunate part is that Fiddle is still (2.

Have you ever wanted to get return value from file which is read with Kernel#load without resorting to global variables or constants. It is actually quite simple when you realize that you can use non-local exit (continuations) to do that.