To write your Ruby programs, you will need an editor −
- If you are working on a Windows machine, then you can use any simple text editor like Notepad or Edit plus.
- VIM https://vim8.org/ (Vi IMproved) is a very simple text editor. This is available on almost all Unix machines and now Windows as well. Otherwise, you can use your favorite vi editor to write Ruby programs.
- Ruby Development Environment (RDE) is also a very good IDE for windows users.
Interactive Ruby (IRb)
Interactive Ruby (IRb) provides a shell for experimentation. Within the IRb shell, you can immediately view expression results, line by line.
This tool comes along with Ruby installation so you have nothing to do extra to have IRb working.
Just type irb at your command prompt and an Interactive Ruby Session will start as given below -
$irb
irb 0.6.1(99/09/16)
irb(main):001:0> def hello
irb(main):002:1> out = "Hello World"
irb(main):003:1> puts out
irb(main):004:1> end
nil
irb(main):005:0> hello
Hello World
nil
irb(main):006:0>Do not worry about what we did here. You will learn all these steps in subsequent chapters.
