while you are at it, get the book "learning unix for OS X Tiger"
You're going to need a few unix skills here. Not a lot, but it will  
help you understand stuff more.
If you need more, get Unix In a Nutshell (it covers OS X, Linux, Unix)
On Apr 18, 2007, at 9:40 AM, smc smc wrote:

> thanks
> i finally got it!!!
>
>
> On 4/17/07, Noah Easterly <noah.easterly / gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Apr 17, 6:28 pm, "smc smc" <fixxie.w... / gmail.com> wrote:
>> > oh
>> > now i got this...
>> >
>> > h-68-164-42-185:~ stefan$ ruby ruby.rb
>> > ruby: No such file or directory -- ruby.rb (LoadError)
>> > h-68-164-42-185:~ stefan$ cd documents
>> > h-68-164-42-185:~/documents stefan$ ruby hello.rb
>> > hello.rb:1: Invalid char `\320' in expression
>> > hello.rb:1: Invalid char `\317' in expression
>> > hello.rb:1: Invalid char `\021' in expression
>> > hello.rb:1: Invalid char `\340' in expression
>> > hello.rb:1: Invalid char `\241' in expression
>> > hello.rb:1: Invalid char `\261' in expression
>> > h-68-164-42-185:~/documents stefan$
>> >
>> > do i need to get into irb then out and then do it?
>>
>> Nope, it looks like the file wasn't saved as plain text.  I'm  
>> guessing
>> you tried saving it from Word, like you said earlier.  I don't know
>> how to save as plain text in Word, so I'll show you how to do it
>> another way.
>>
>> Open your file in TextEdit.  If TextEdit can't open the old file, it
>> might be having problems with the MS format, just delete the old one
>> and start a new file in TextEdit, and enter your ruby code.  Make  
>> sure
>> you hit return at the end of your file ( this is just so we can view
>> it with the cat command later ).
>>
>> Unless you have converted the file to plain text, TextEdit won't let
>> you save it as a ".rb" file.  So, first, go to "Format->Make Plain
>> Text"  (if you only see "Make Rich Text", then it's already plain
>> text).  If it asks you whether to convert the file to plain text,
>> click OK.  Then save the file as "hello.rb".  TextEdit will probably
>> pop up with a message saying 'You have used the extension ".rb" at  
>> the
>> end of the name.  The standard extension is ".txt".  Click the button
>> that says "Use .rb".  (
>>
>> Now, you can check from the command line that your file is actually
>> plain text, by using the "cat" command.
>>
>> h-68-164-42-185:~/documents stefan$ cat hello.rb
>> puts "Hello World"
>>
>> And now you can run it.
>>
>> h-68-164-42-185:~/documents stefan$ ruby hello.rb
>> Hello World
>>
>> Later on, you might want to consider getting a "real" text editor to
>> help you write ruby code.  They'll do things that Word & TextEdit
>> don't that make it easier to write good code.  Features like syntax
>> highlighting and auto-indentation are two of the ways that "real"  
>> text
>> editors help coders catch errors early on.
>>
>> I'm not going to tell you which one to use.  If you ask any
>> programmer, anywhere on the web, they'll tell you which they use, and
>> why it's the one you should use.  You might want to check out the
>> wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editors), as  
>> that
>> might give you some good leads.
>>
>> But, I wouldn't get too sidetracked by looking for an editor.
>> TextEdit (in plain text mode) should be good enough to get you  
>> through
>> the basic tutorials.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> fish can't fly but birds can
> birds can't swim but fish can
>