How can I securely erase a file?

Question

Is there a Gem or means of securely erasing a file in Ruby? I'd like to avoid external programs that may not be present on the system.

By "secure erase" I'm referring to overwriting the file contents.

Answer 1

If you are on *nix, a pretty good way would be to just call shred using exec/open3/open4:

`shred -fxuz #{filename}`

http://www.gnu.org/s/coreutils/manual/html_node/shred-invocation.html

Check this similar post:

Writing a file shredder in python or ruby?