Parse Perl Data::Dumper output with ruby - ruby

Question

I've a directory full of state files which were printed by Perl's Data::Dumper. The content looks like this:
$VAR1 = {
'localtime' => 'Tue Jun 6 11:48:20 2017',
'lookback_history' => {
'ifHCOutOctets' => {
'1496742350.42394' => '74365529910',
'1496742455.72943' => '74366309899',
'1496742446.38562' => '74366309114',
'1496742500.42388' => '74372744112'
},
'ifHCInOctets' => {
'1496742350.42394' => '13198364950',
'1496742455.72943' => '13198718163',
'1496742446.38562' => '13198705712',
'1496742500.42388' => '13199010183'
}
},
'timestamp' => '1496742500.42388',
'ifHCOutOctets' => '74372744112',
'ifHCInOctets' => '13199010183'
};
I've to analyze if the files contain unreproducible information.
Is there a way in ruby to parse those perl dumps?

Answer 1

If this data is yours and you are positive it contains no unexpected/harmful strings in it, the simplest way would be (assuming the content of the file is what you have posted):
eval(File.read(file))
my_local_var = $VAR1

Answer 2

Since you already have the files and can't change them, one way would be to use a utility that converts them to a format your Ruby understands, like JSON. If you have the JSON module in your Perl distribution (you probably have a system Perl), you also have the json_pp utility.
So you could shell out to that, and let it convert your Perl data structure (Data::Dumper is nothing else than that) to JSON:
$ cat data.pl | json_pp -f eval -t json > data.json
and then use Ruby to convert that JSON to a Ruby data structure:
require 'json'
JSON.parse(File.read('data.json'))
#=> {
# "localtime" => "Tue Jun 6 11:48:20 2017",
# "ifHCOutOctets" => "74372744112",
# "ifHCInOctets" => "13199010183",
# # ...
# }