Question

I’m currently learning Ruby, and I’ve come across a weird snag in the tutorial I’m using. I’m using this exercise from Learn Ruby The Hard Way, and it keeps producing a syntax error, and I can’t figure out why.

The code I’m trying to use is

    puts <<-'HERE'
        There's something going on here.
        With the PARAGRAPH thing
        We'll be able to type as much as we like.
        Even 4 lines if we want, or 5, or 6.
    HERE

But, it always produces the following syntax error

ex9.rb:12: syntax error, unexpected tIDENTIFIER, expecting $end
We'll be able to type as much as we like.
     ^

Any help would be appreciated! I’m using TextWrangler, and TextWrangler parses it as a block quote, but Ruby is not.

Answer 1

Although it does not seem like it in the code snippet you posted, you probably did have a space on both or one side of the - in <<-'HERE'.

If you do, you will likely see warnings like this:

test.rb:1: warning: `<<' after local variable is interpreted as binary operator
test.rb:1: warning: even though it seems like here document
test.rb:4: syntax error, unexpected tIDENTIFIER, expecting $end
        We'll be able to type as much as we like.
             ^