Problem on an example from ruby-lang.org

Ruby
1

Hello all,

I’m new to Ruby and I’ve been taking a look at the “Getting Started”
stuff from ruby-lang.org. I found the following example from
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/ruby-from-other-languages/:

class Fixnum

You can, but please don’t do this

def +( other )
self - other
end
end

If I run this code using the ruby command, it’s fine. However, on irb, I
get the following error:

C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rbreadline.rb:8446:in
_rl_find_next_mbchar': undefined method force_encoding’ for
nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rbreadline.rb:1692:in
block in expand_prompt' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rbreadline.rb:1676:in each’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rbreadline.rb:1676:in
expand_prompt' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rbreadline.rb:1765:in rl_expand_prompt’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rbreadline.rb:1790:in
rl_set_prompt' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rbreadline.rb:4718:in readline’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/readline.rb:40:in
readline' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/input-method.rb:115:in gets’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb.rb:139:in block (2 levels) in eval_input' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb.rb:273:in signal_status’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb.rb:138:in block in eval_input' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:188:in call’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:188:in
buf_input' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:103:in getc’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/slex.rb:205:in match_io' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/slex.rb:75:in match’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:286:in token' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:262:in lex’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:233:in block (2 levels) in each_top_level_statement' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:229:in loop’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:229:in block in each_top_level_statement' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:228:in catch’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb/ruby-lex.rb:228:in
each_top_level_statement' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb.rb:155:in eval_input’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb.rb:70:in block in start' from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb.rb:69:in catch’
from C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb.rb:69:in start' from C:/Ruby192/bin/irb:12:in ’

And then irb abruptly closes. I’m using Windows 7 Professional, ruby
1.9.2p0 (2010-08-18) [i386-mingw32] and irb 0.9.6(09/06/30).

I’ve done some searching about this problem, but couldn’t find anything.
I apologize in case it is a known issue.

Regards,
Andre

2

Andre Willik valenti wrote:

class Fixnum

You can, but please don’t do this

def +( other )
self - other
end
end

Which bit of “please don’t do this” don’t you understand? :slight_smile:

irb is itself a large and quite complex ruby program; look in
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/* or the equivalent on your system.

If you break basic methods like addition, then it will fail. The same
would apply to pretty much any other ruby program.

It is, however, a good demonstration of why polluting core classes is a
really bad idea (because other people’s code will depend on them
behaving in the usual way, and you can’t isolate those changes so they
only affect your code)