Neither ruby and nor irb can load .rb file in current directory

Question

I'm having a really noob problem with importing files in Ruby. I'm making a Ruby app in Windows XP. All the class files for the app are in "C:/Documents/Prgm/Surveyor_Ruby/lib". But when I require a file in another file, neither ruby nor irb can find the required file.

The current directory's contents:

C:\Documents\Prgm\Surveyor_Ruby\lib>dir
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is AAAA-BBBB

 Directory of C:\Documents\Prgm\Surveyor_Ruby\lib

10/09/2010  06:32 PM    <DIR>          .
10/09/2010  06:32 PM    <DIR>          ..
10/08/2010  03:22 PM             5,462 main (commented).rb
10/08/2010  03:41 PM                92 question.rb
10/08/2010  09:06 PM             2,809 survey.rb
10/09/2010  06:25 PM               661 surveyor.rb
10/08/2010  01:39 PM             1,546 test.rb
               5 File(s)         10,570 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  40,255,045,632 bytes free

Confirmation that irb is in correct directory:

C:\Documents\Prgm\Surveyor_Ruby\lib>irb
irb(main):001:0> Dir.pwd
=> "C:/Documents/Prgm/Surveyor_Ruby/lib"

...yet irb can't load survey.rb:

irb(main):002:0> require 'survey'
LoadError: no such file to load -- survey
        from <internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require'
        from <internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require'
        from (irb):2
        from C:/Ruby192/bin/irb:12:in `<main>'

Solution 1

None of these worked for me, but this did:

irb -I .
>require 'file'
 => true

Solution 2

require './hede'

or

require_relative 'hede'

This works for me in both Ruby (1.9.3) and JRuby (1.7.x) on linux. I haven't tested it on windows.

Solution 3

How about this command? A little cumbersome to write but really clean and it should always work:

➜ $ irb
> require "#{Dir.pwd}/file_to_load.rb"
=> true 

Solution 4

Noticed the same behavior but my linux roots had me try:.\file.rb and it loaded into the irb. Try explicitly declaring the current directory.

Solution 5

it's damn dirty, but you can always do at the very first line:

$: << '.'

and off you go with pwd'ed require. It's quite useful for interactive/creative testing with IRB

View more solutions

Comments

[Jörg W Mittag]

This only works if the current directory happens to be the one that both the files are in.

[Darme]

Check also my solution, it's especially fine when you didn't fire up irb with -I . to set the pwd as the $LOAD_PATH directory.

[John Hinnegan]

Thanks for this. I have no idea why require wasn't working for me.

[Dan]

Wonderful feature of irb!

[Pramod]

@DanKozlowski More like, bad design of Ruby! In Python, the current directory is added to PATH by default.