Compiled eRuby 1.0.5 under MinGW: $ /c/mingw/usr/local/bin/eruby --version eRuby version 1.0.5 ruby 1.8.2 (2004-09-06) [i386-mingw32] $ _ Here the truncation problem does not occur. Still, I wonder why this all happened with the mswin32 build of ruby/eruby. But at least I can now continue development at home at a Win32 box.