From: Dave Baldwin <dave.baldwin@3dlabs.com>
Date: 2004-05-20T23:08:04+09:00
Subject: variable scope in required files

This behaviour has rather surprised me:

file a.rb
	a = 10

file b.rb
	require "a.rb"
	puts a

dave 123% ruby b.rb
b.rb:2: undefined local variable or method `a' for main:Object 
(NameError)

dave 124% ruby -v
ruby 1.8.1 (2003-10-31) [powerpc-darwin]

Using  $a fixes this but I don't want to do this or  I could join the 
two files at run time and eval them.

I didn't expect the scope of a to be private to a.rb and can find no 
mention in pickaxe about this.

Dave.