From: james.d.masters@...
Date: 2007-04-24T11:45:07+09:00
Subject: Re: exception and $!

On Apr 23, 6:55 pm, Paul Rogers <pmr16...@gmail.com> wrote:
> the pickaxe tells me that the last exception is available in $!, but
> c:\>irb
> irb(main):001:0> raise "Its all bad!"
> RuntimeError: Its all bad!
>         from (irb):1
> irb(main):002:0> puts $!
> nil

You may need to check for $! within the context of a begin/rescue/end
block; this works:

begin
  raise "Its all bad!"
rescue
  puts "rescuing... #{$!}"
end

BTW, I'd recommend using the following instead of $! as $! is Perl-
esque (i.e. esoteric):

begin
  raise "Its all bad!"
rescue => error
  puts "rescuing... #{error}"
  # or even better use error.backtrace for backtrace information
end