On Jun 18, 2006, at 19:33, Cliff Cyphers wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 03:22:15AM +0900, Gareth Clews wrote:
>> Hey there, sorry I'm a little new to ruby and need a tiny bit of  
>> help if
>> anyone can see to help thatd be great:
>
> First of off there's ignorance all throughout this post.

And little useful information in the reply - it's all well and good  
saying "look things up before you post", but it's usually common  
courtesy to at least show people where to look.

Basically, irb isn't a shell - on its own, it doesn't list files or  
directories, it just executes ruby statements.  Ruby can do these  
things, though, and here's how to find out:

For I/O in general, useful things to read are the relevant chapter of  
Programming Ruby ("Basic Input and Output"), available online here:
http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/ruby/pickaxe/
http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/ruby/pickaxe/html/tut_io.html

The Pathname library is my favourite for this sort of thing, docs here:
http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib
http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/pathname/rdoc/index.html

matthew smillie.