Robert Feldt wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have a couple of students that use Ruby in a course and they've run 
> into a problem that is not my home ground since I don't run Ruby from 
> the one-click installer. But maybe some of you have seen this problem:
> 
> After installing the latest one-click installer irb works from the 
> standard windows command line prompt (cmd) but they say they cannot use 
> curly {} or normal braces [] so cannot try out code easily.
> 
> Can this be a problem with the one-click installer irb or is it their 
> windows setup?

That was discussed here 
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/107700
and there http://poignantguide.net/ruby/expansion-pak-1.html
(the latter being the funnier link, thanks to why_).

Do they also have problems with '\', '|', '@' and '~'. In that case they 
might try to create '.inputrc' in their home directories and put the 
following lines into that file

"\M-[": "["
"\M-]": "]"
"\M-{": "{"
"\M-}": "}"
"\M-\\": "\\"
"\M-|": "|"
"\M-@": "@"
"\M-~": "~"

They might need to patch some of the settings, depending on the keyboard 
layout. The above lines fit my German keyboard layout. In Sweden YMMV.

> Any hints appreciated.
> 
> I've been trying to get them to install cygwin and run from their but 
> they are stubborn... ;)

They might try Linux... ;-)

Stephan