> Raj,
> I got an "unexpected tLSHFT" error message when I put that $: line at 
> the top. But, I appreciate your explanation. Using what you told me and 
> what Tim suggested next helped me to make it work. I put my "required" 
> Ruby file in ../ruby/lib/1.8, with all those other .rb files in there. 
> Thanks a lot!
>   

I have no idea why that would happen.  The exact excerpt that I use in 
my code is:

$file_dir = './STFiles/'
$: << $file_dir

and that works fine.  If you wanted just add the current directory, try
$: << "./"
and maybe that will work better.

Raj