On 7/19/06, listrecv / gmail.com <listrecv / gmail.com> wrote: > > Sean O'Halpin wrote: > > Not true. For example, try double-clicking on a .rb file in Explorer - > > that runs ruby as a console program without going through cmd.exe. > > I believe that there is still a cmd.exe running in the background, > powering it. Nope. It's spawned directly. Make sure you don't have cmd.exe running, double-click a .rb file containing just the line gets to make sure it waits for input, check Task Manager and you'll see that there is no cmd.exe running. > > If I'm wrong, is there a way to make a .bat script invoke irb, but skip > cmd.exe? > No - .bat (& .cmd) files are scripts that are interpreted by cmd.exe. However, you could have an irb.rb file containing this (pinched from irb.bat): require "irb" if __FILE__ == $0 IRB.start(__FILE__) else # check -e option if /^-e$/ =~ $0 IRB.start(__FILE__) else IRB.setup(__FILE__) end end which would bypass cmd.exe. However, command line history seems to be built into the console these days (i.e. it's nothing to do with cmd.exe). Regards, Sean