Question

I have a ruby script that is failing due to my environment, I think it is demonstrated by this strange behaviour in irb ( I am also using rvm but don’t think that is the problem)

>> ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2009-06-12 patchlevel 174) [i686-darwin9.8.0]
>> irb
>> FileUtils.mkdir_p('tmp')
    NameError: uninitialized constant FileUtils
        from (irb):1
>> help
    => nil
>> FileUtils.mkdir_p('tmp')
     => "tmp" 

The FileUtils command initially fails but then after typing Help (which also fails) it seems to work.

I have tried require ‘rubygems’ and require ‘FileUtils’ – which does fix the problem – but would like to understand whats happening here.

Answer 1

I didn’t know there was a “help” command, but apparently it has dependency on FileUtils, probably to load help files. “help” is loading its requirements into the IRB session.

>> before = ObjectSpace.each_object.map { |i| i.class }.uniq
=> [Regexp, String, Array, Class, Hash, Module, Proc, MatchData, File, Binding, NoMemoryError, Float, SystemStackError, fatal, Bignum, Object, IO, Thread, ThreadGroup, IRB::Locale, IRB::Notifier::LeveledNotifier, IRB::Notifier::CompositeNotifier, IRB::StdioOutputMethod, IRB::Notifier::NoMsgNotifier, Enumerable::Enumerator, RubyToken::TkNL, RubyToken::TkEND, RubyToken::TkBITOR, RubyToken::TkIDENTIFIER, RubyToken::TkDOT, RubyToken::TkRBRACE, RubyToken::TkSPACE, RubyToken::TkfLBRACE, RubyToken::TkCONSTANT, RubyToken::TkASSIGN, IRB::SLex::Node, IRB::SLex, RubyLex, IRB::ReadlineInputMethod, IRB::WorkSpace, IRB::Context, IRB::Irb]
>> help
=> nil
>> after  = ObjectSpace.each_object.map { |i| i.class }.uniq
=> [Regexp, String, MatchData, Array, Class, RI::ClassEntry, RI::MethodEntry, Hash, Module, Dir, Proc, File, Binding, NoMemoryError, Float, SystemStackError, fatal, Bignum, Object, IO, Thread, ThreadGroup, IRB::Locale, Range, IRB::Notifier::LeveledNotifier, IRB::Notifier::CompositeNotifier, IRB::StdioOutputMethod, IRB::Notifier::NoMsgNotifier, YAML::Syck::Resolver, Gem::ConfigFile, RubyToken::TkNL, RubyToken::TkIDENTIFIER, IRB::SLex::Node, IRB::SLex, RubyLex, IRB::ReadlineInputMethod, IRB::WorkSpace, IRB::Context, IRB::Irb, RI::TopLevelEntry, RI::RiReader, GetoptLong, RI::RiCache, RI::Options, RiDriver, Rational, Date::Infinity, Enumerable::Enumerator, RubyToken::TkRBRACE, DefaultDisplay, RI::TextFormatter]
>> after == before
=> false
>> after - before
=> [RI::ClassEntry, RI::MethodEntry, Dir, Range, YAML::Syck::Resolver, Gem::ConfigFile, RI::TopLevelEntry, RI::RiReader, GetoptLong, RI::RiCache, RI::Options, RiDriver, Rational, Date::Infinity, DefaultDisplay, RI::TextFormatter]

It loads the classes in after - before. Where is FileUtils you say? I think its a module that is part of Dir, but I am not 100% on that.