From: Cary Swoveland Date: 2010-01-20T04:48:21+09:00 Subject: Re: Newbie needs help getting started AB & Justin, Thank you both for your helpful comments. I'm slowly getting there, but there have been numerous surprises (one, for example, is that 'x' is not a character). Not having an IDE, I've resorted to inserting umpteen puts "..." in my code to see what's happening, and to locate the source of Ruby error messages that do not have a line reference (exceptions, in part, I think). Am I missing something on debugging technique? I'd really like to use an IDE with a step-through debugger. Can someone recommend one that runs on Macs? One other question (that I should have asked initially): is this forum appropriate for posting newbie questions, or would another be more appropriate? Cary -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.