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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-15T22:44:18+00:00

foo.rb is a one-liner that puts __FILE__ irb -r ./foo.rb gives me the absolute

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foo.rb is a one-liner that puts __FILE__

irb -r ./foo.rb

gives me the absolute path to foo.rb. This is not the behavior if I run ruby foo.rb. Why is it happening in irb?

irb 0.9.6(09/06/30),
ruby 1.9.3p327

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The reason this happens in IRB is the same reason this would happen if you had written a program named bar.rb with the following contents.

    require './foo'

    You will find that using IRB with the require as you do is no different than calling bar.rb which has the require.

    From the documentation:

    __FILE__ — The name of the file currently being executed, including
    path relative to the directory where the application was started up
    (or the current directory, if it has been changed).

    So this is including the path relative to the directory where the application was started up. Who knows where irb or bar are? When it is not clear, then the path is given as well.

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