Re: basic beginner help needed

Thank you all for your input. After reading the comments I took the 
advice of reading the two on-line tutorials, so this is where I am now: 
I have switched to a different computer that has the Windows XP 
operating system, have installed Ruby 1.9.1 on it (with ruby.exe located 
in ‘C:\Ruby191\bin’), I downloaded and installed the SciTE editor 
recommended by Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book, and have been 
successful in getting the SciTE editor to open scripts located in 
‘C:\Documents and Settings\Karl Halvorson\My Documents\Ruby\My Ruby 
Tutorial scripts’. The tutorials with this editor started out fine, I 
entered the text

puts "Hello, World."

Into the text editor, pressed go and got

>ruby hello.rb
Hello, World.
>Exit code: 0

To me that looked like it worked the way it was supposed to.
I then went on to the next step and typed the following into the text 
editor:

puts "Hello, World. What is your name?"
myname = gets()
puts "Well, hello there " + myname + "."

I was instructed to save the file again, so I did, as hello2.rb, and ran 
it again from the editor by pressing go. What I returned in the right 
pane of the editor was:

>ruby hello2.rb

Also, the Windows Command Prompt opened up with 
‘C:\Ruby191\bin\ruby.exe’ at the top in the menu bar, but nothing in the 
black screen except for a blinking cursor (see attached image1). I tried 
typing in the black screen, but was unable to. The tutorial stated, “you 
should see a greeting, be asked for your name, and then greeted by 
name.” None of this happened.

Any suggestions what to try next?

Also, Phaneee5, could you explain, in beginner language (step-by-step) 
what you mean by “Setting the PATH environment variable to the ruby->bin 
folder”, for this is not covered in any of the biginning tutorials that 
I have read? The part I really don’t understand is “Add this path to the 
PATH environment variable.” The path to ruby.exe on my computer is 
‘C:\Ruby191\bin’, but what exactly is the ‘PATH environment variable’? 
and how exactly do I add ‘C:\Ruby191\bin’ to it?

Thank you all again for your help.


Phani Medicharla wrote:
> Hello Karl,
> 
> Try going through these books to get started in Ruby - 
> http://www.humblelittlerubybook.com/book/hlrb.pdf
> http://www.sapphiresteel.com/The-Book-Of-Ruby
> 
> I have quoted these as they are readily available on the internet for 
> free. And as pointed out by Heruacles, posting the code snippet with 
> which you have a problem will help the forum give you better answers.
> 
> After you write code in notepad (try notepad++ or any other code editor 
> which will give you syntax highlighting, this will help you learn 
> easily) save the file with a .rb extension anywhere on your computer 
> (have a separate folder for this to keep your ruby files in one place).
> 
> Setting the PATH environment variable to the ruby->bin folder helps you 
> launch the ruby interpreter from the command line (from any path). If 
> you have installed ruby in your C drive for e.g., the bin dir would be 
> c:\ruby-1.9.1\bin
> Add this path to the PATH environment variable.
> 
> After this, you can open command prompt, navigate to the path where you 
> saved your ruby file and type 'ruby filename'. For e.g, if you have 
> saved your file in a folder called 'my scripts' on D with the name 
> 'first.rb', you must type the following in the command prompt
> D:\my scripts>ruby first.rb
> 
> Karl Halvorson wrote:
>> I am new to Ruby and have been looking for some basic beginner help. I
>> have not been able to find a beginner forum anywhere, so I apologize if
>> this is too basic a question for this group.  I have installed ruby
>> 1.9.1 on my windows 7 pc and have had success using interactive ruby
>> (and the Windows command prompt). Where I am stuck is creating a script
>> in notepad and then running that script. It seems a bit peculiar to me
>> that all the beginning tutorials that I ahave tried just say to create
>> these scripts, but they don’t mention where they need to be saved.  I
>> also have not come across any tutorials that cover configuring the ruby
>> file path. I believe I have written and named the scripts properly, but
>> when I try to open them, I get the error message:
>> 
>>  NameError: undefined local variable or method ‘hello’ for main:Object
>>  from (irb):1
>>  from C:/Ruby191/bin/irb:12:in ‘<main>’
>> 
>> Any help would be much appreciated.


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