From: Gary Watson <pfharlock@...>
Date: 2006-01-05T00:38:00+09:00
Subject: Re: gets bug?

Shea Martin wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> if ARGV.size > 0
>    puts "first arg is #{ARGV[0]}"
> end
> puts "enter text"
> ans = gets
> puts "you said #{ans}"
> </snip>
> 
> Run this code, as ./test.rb.  Then run it with an command line arg, like 
> "./test.rb -x".  And you will get an error like this:
> 
>   "test.rb:3:in `gets': No such file or directory - -x (Errno::ENOENT)"
> 
> The fix I have found, is to change gets to $stdin.gets.  I saw some 
> traffic on the mailing list archives regarding this, but no resolution.
> 
> Is this expected behaviour?
> ruby -v is: ruby 1.8.3 (2005-09-21) [sparc-solaris2.10]
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> ~S

I've run into this problem before as well, somebody pointed me to the ri 
documentation on Kernel#gets, it says the following.

Returns the next line from the list of files in +ARGV+, or from standard 
input if no files are present on the command line. Returns +nil+ at end 
of file.

Hope this helps.