We have some scripts we run which are "instrumented" with messages and progress bars.

Two issues:
# These are muddying up our specs
# In production, the progress bars can raise "Broken Pipe" errors (std out issues?).

We will probably create some abstraction for this concept, but we started with:



     puts "It's working." if show_instrumentation?







The specs:







  describe '#show_instrumentation?' do


    it "should default to false" do


      @it.show_instrumentation?.should be_false


      #@it.should_not be_show_instrumentation


    end


  end





  describe '#show_instrumentation?' do


    it "should be true if ENV['INFO']=true" do


      ENV['INFO'] = true


      @it.show_instrumentation?.should be_true


    end


  end







The code:







def show_instrumentation?


  @show_instrumentation ||= (ENV['info'] =~ /true/i)


end







This worked.  But sometimes, ENV['INFO'] == 'true' when the first spec was run (spec --reverse).  So.. we added the after:







after :each do


  ENV['info'] = ''


end







Fail.  nil is not false.





Turns out:







''      =~ /true/i -> nil


'false' =~ /true/i -> nil


'TRUE'  =~ /true/i -> 0


nil     =~ /true/i -> false







So... how do you return a boolean from =~?










def show_instrumentation?


  @show_instrumentation ||= (ENV['info'] =~ /true/i) >= 0


end