Running a Ruby program in the command line

Question

I just installed Ruby 2.0.0-p247 on Windows 7 and I wrote a program called calc.rb which contains only one expression: puts 1 + 2. In my tutorial book it says to run it in the command line by typing ruby calc.rb, but when I try to run it it comes back with this message:

ruby: No such file or directory -- calc.rb (LoadError)

Why?

• MarkoHiel: How did you install ruby? Seems like your console doesn't know about your installed ruby.
• tessi: The ruby binary has to be in your PATH
• Peter Alfvin: @tessi, if the Ruby binary wasn't in the PATH, then Ruby wouldn't execute. In this case, Ruby is executing and reporting that it cannot find the file calc.rb
• Peter Alfvin: Are you sure that calc.rb is in the "current directory". Can you do a dir calc.rb or whatever the Windows/DOS command line command line is for listing a file?

Answer 1

You should be in the same folder that your script file to provide only the filename. If you don't, you should provide the relative or absolute path to your script file.

Answer 2

I was getting the same error code in Windows 8. I had to get into the folder on my desktop via the command prompt (cd desktop\"folder name") and then type ruby calc.rb.txt for it to show 3 as the result. Hope this helps!