From: Zev Blut <rubyzbibd@...>
Date: 2004-08-30T12:52:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Typos (Was: performance comparison)

Hello,

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 23:12:22 +0900, Alexey Verkhovsky <alex@verk.info>  
wrote:
>
> Try "irb --noprompt".
>
> To me, the biggest problem with using irb in this mode is the "set up
> some context" part.
>
> Believe it or not, but it is quite easy to do with Eclipse/Java: one can
> set a breakpoint, execute some test, wait till debugger stops on the
> breakpoint, and then use Eclipse "Display" view to evaluate arbitrary
> Java expressions in the current scope.
>
> So far, I don't know any easy way to do the same with Ruby, so I end up
> inserting things like "puts <expression>.inspect" and rerunning the
> test. Which is not as nice as an interactive shell. Does anyone have a
> better way?

In addition, to Florian Gross' nice technique, you could also use the
Ruby Debugger instead of IRB.
Just run your program with "ruby -r debug yourprog.rb". Even better,
if you use Emacs, is the ruby debugger mode for it "M-x rubydb".
Of course, this is not as transparent as Eclipse...

Cheers,
Zev