From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2002-12-05T09:41:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Book for People Who Aren't (Yet) Programmers

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Did you do multi-line statements in BASIC interactively?  Like loops?
> How did it turn out?
> 
> Did you find it frustrating when you made a typo?

I like irb but I do sometimes feel frustrated when this happens. But 
it's not an inherent problem with interactive shells. Take zsh for 
example. If you type a multiline statement (e.g., a function def), you 
can later edit the whole multiline statement. You get all the usual 
command line editing bindings, plus up and down arrow for changing lines 
(when you get to the top or bottom, the arrows take on their more 
familiar history-scrolling function). IMO, irb would be much more 
valuable with this feature.