From: Alexey Verkhovsky <alex@...>
Date: 2004-09-28T04:13:45+09:00
Subject: [Ruby Forum] irb feature suggestion

Cross-posted from Ruby Forum:
http://www.ruby-forum.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=62

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How do you get the value of the last expression entered in irb? 

SML/NJ puts it in the variable 'it', Python uses '_', I think. 
So you can do something like this: 
Code:
> 6*9 
=> it = 54 
> it - 12 
=> it = 42

Can you do this in Irb? It's very useful for evaluating expressions
interactively, without cluttering up your symbol table (e.g. when
evaluating something piece-by-piece to see how it's working.) 

For example, I just did 
Code:
YAML::load(<<END) 
# ... some YAML here ... 
END
and got the right result, then realised I had no way of using it.