Ruby Admirer wrote:
>> That is simply because IRB has already required 'readline' while it was 
>> starting up.
>>     
> That makes sense.
> But why within irb, load 'readline' raises a LoadError ?
>   
because load() needs a file path (absolute or relative, with .rb 
extension included), whereas require() adds .rb extension to the name, 
and then looks for the file in all paths listed in $:

Alex