From: Florian Gilcher <flo@...>
Date: 2009-06-18T09:59:28+09:00
Subject: Re: I need help learning Ruby; completely lost!


On Jun 18, 2009, at 2:38 AM, Kaleb Mccamish wrote:

> I need help. I need to learn some basics of programming, and was  
> turned
> on to Ruby by a friend. So I bought a book about it, installed Ruby  
> and
> Vim, sat down and made a tiny little Ruby program that should print  
> out
> "Hello, Matz!"
>
> But, it doesn't.

It does ;).

> I saved it as a .rb file, double clicked it hoping to see my very  
> first
> program in any language EVER come to life, and... A command prompt- 
> like
> window opened for a split second, closed, and nothing happened.

Thats no error in your program - thats how the windows command prompt  
behaves:
it closes right after the program finishes. As just printing one line  
is really
quick, you only see a glimpse of it.

So, you have multiple options. Either you open the command prompt by  
hand (Start
-> Execute -> "cmd"), navigate to the folder where your program is and  
type:

   ruby programname.rb

Another option is to add "gets" at the end of your program, like this:

   puts "Hello, Matz!"
   gets

This makes the program wait for input. It will close once you press  
Enter.

>
> Where oh where did I go wrong? Do I need this "Rake" program to  
> use .rb
> files? Is it a problem with Vim? Please help, I'm so confused I don't
> know what to do!


I hope I cleared the confusion. Welcome to the list!

Regards,
Florian

--
Florian Gilcher

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