Question

Ruby Settings From terminal

 % ruby -v
ruby 1.9.2p180 (2011-02-18 revision 30909) [i686-linux]
=> ~/ruby/grounded/test
 % where ruby
/home/mike/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/bin/ruby
/home/mike/.rvm/bin/ruby
/usr/local/bin/ruby
/usr/bin/ruby
=> ~/ruby/grounded/Person/test
 % which ruby
/home/mike/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/bin/ruby
% rvm current
ruby-1.9.2-p180

Directory Structure

 % tree
.
├── bowling.rb
└── bowling_spec.rb

File Contents

bowling.rb

class Bowling

end

bowling_spec.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'rspec'
require 'bowling'
describe Bowling, "#score" do
  it "returns 0 for all gutter game" do
    bowling = Bowling.new
    20.times { bowling.hit(0) }
    bowling.score.should eq(0)
  end
end

% ruby bowling_spec.rb

/home/mike/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require': no such file to load -- bowling (LoadError)
    from /home/mike/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
    from bowling_spec.rb:3:in `<main>'

Questions

• Why am I getting a LoadError when bowling.rb and bowling_spec.rb
  are in the same folder?
• In the error what the heck is .../site_ruby/1.9.1/... when I am running ruby 1.9.2 then why would 1.9.1 even show up?
• how do I get over this hump and start having fun with ruby.

Answer 1

When you require a file and don’t specify an absolutely path to the file, Ruby looks on its load path (accessed within ruby as $LOAD_PATH or $:) and checks each directory there for the file you want. You cannot load bowling.rb because it’s not in a directory on your load path.

The solution is one of two things:

1. Put the current directory on the load path:

   $:.unshift File.expand_path('.')
   

   This puts the full path to the current working directory on the load path.

2. Use require with the absolute path to the file:

   require File.expand_path('../bowling', __FILE__)
   

A little additional info: File.expand_path returns the absolute path to the first parameter from the current working directory, unless a second parameter is given; then it uses that as the starting point. So the whole line could be read:

require /home/mike/src/something/bowling_spec.rb/../bowling