Ruby runtime

The last tool you need is a Ruby runtime. This is a program that can execute Ruby code, and it is a program that can be run in your shell (much like cd and ls).

If you have some code in a file with the name hello.rb, and you have navigated to the directory where the file is saved, then you can type the following and hit enter, in order to execute the code:

ruby hello.rb

This will tell the ruby runtime to interpret the contents of the file hello.rb as Ruby code, and execute it.

One can also use this program to do other things. You probably won’t need these a lot, but we think it’s good to know. You can try these by typing these commands in your terminal.

E.g. you can print out the version of the program:

ruby --version

Or execute Ruby code without storing it to a file:

ruby -e 'puts 123'