On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 11:54:17 -0500, James Edward Gray II wrote:

> 1. Type:  "1 < 405"
> 2. Push the left arrow until your cursor is on the space before the 4  
> (5 times)
> 3. Use a backward delete key to remove the <
> 4. Push the right arrow to move to the end of the line (5 times)
> 5. Try to type: "
> 
> IRb ignores my typing at this point.  Can anyone else confirm that  
> they see this behavior?

Nope!  Doesn't happen for me, either on Cygwin 1.5.24 with Ruby 1.8.6
(2007-03-13) or Ubuntu Dapper with Ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24).

I imagine it's something weird in your .inputrc, but I've never been good
at the terminal stuff - too many legacy layers. 

What platform are you on?

Also, I should point out that it's not possible to move the arrow right 5
times (at least on my systems) - you've deleted one character, so there's
only 4 characters to go back over.  If you're really able to move it five
times, that could be a clue right there.  A clue about what, I have no
idea.  

-- 
Jay Levitt                |
Boston, MA                | My character doesn't like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm         | - Kristoffer