How to open a Ruby file in terminal?

Question

I have a ruby file saved on my desktop as test.rb. How can I open it with terminal? I have already tried to use /home/desktop/test.rb and what I get in response is bash: /home/desktop/test.rb: No such file or directory.

Solution 1

You can use the ruby command, which calls the Ruby interpreter on your file:

ruby ~/Desktop/test.rb

This way you don't need to make your file executable.

(The tilde symbol ~ is a shorthand for the path to your home folder which is /home/<your-username>.)

If you still need to make your script executable I hope you remembered to type the shebang line on the first line of your script:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

then run chmod +x ~/Desktop/test.rb on the terminal to make test.rb executable.

Solution 2

/home/<username>/ is the path of your home-directory. If you start your Terminal, your Shell starts in your home-directory, you can print that path with the command

$ pwd

The you need the path of the Desktop-Folder, try it with

$ ls

Your final command than will probably look like that:

~$ ./Desktop/test.rb

But you should try a tutorial for the Linux shell, like this one: LinuxCommand.org

Comments

[user164814]

Thank you, but it says access denied, what can I do?

[tvn]

The file isn't executable. Try chmod +x ./Desktop/test.rb and after that try to execute the file again. If you want to know more try man chmod (can be closed by tipping 'q')

[user164814]

That didn't quite work.

[Fred Garbutt]

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