I should have mentioned that I'm running under Win2000ProSP3.

I made some progress on getting gets to work under SciTe:

  print "Enter text: " + "\n"	
  # Newline added to make SciTe ver. somewhat match Command line version

  f = File.new("con:")
  while f.gets
	f.close				# Added to try to get the loop to work
	chomp!
	puts 'Got "' + $_ + '"'
	print 'Enter more: '
	f = File.new("con:")		# Added to try to get the loop to work
  end

Of course, this is pretty crude:
1.  The output appears in an SciTe pane
2.  The input is entered in a Command window (with Ctrl-Z on the next line)
3.  The program terminates instead of executing the next File.new.

Any comments?

Regards,
Richard