From: Christopher Sawtell <csawtell@...>
Date: 2001-09-23T10:38:04+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:21561] Re: irb

On 22 Sep 2001 23:00:23 +0900, Fabio wrote:
> Hello. :) I'm new here, and I have not found an archive of the previous
> messages , so I don't know if this is an already discussed topic. Sorry
> to all if it's the case.
> 
> Well, the trouble is that I can't use arrow keys in irb - so I can't use 
> command history, nor moving the cursor inside a command for changing it,


You do not say what operating system and distribution you are using so
this is a guess.

If you are on RedHat or a derivative such as Mandrake you will need to
have both the readline library _and_ the readline development extentions
loaded.

cd into the archive of .rpm files and issue these commands:-

rpm -Uvh readline-4.2-4mdk.i586.rpm
rpm -Uvh readline-devel-4.2-4mdk.i586.rpm

( the second file is sometimes not on the installation CD so you will
have to either get it off the extentions CD or download it from the
distributors ftp archive )

Of course, you will need to use the filenames appropriate to your
particular system.
The command:-

ls readline*

will tell you what they are.

After that you will have to clean out the old configuration settings and
reconfigure ruby.

cd /put/the/full/path/in/here/ruby-1.6.5
make distclean
./configure
make