# Upper arrow key is not worked in irb. is it bug?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/upper-arrow-key-is-not-worked-in-irb-is-it-bug/124102>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 24, 2007, 7:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/upper-arrow-key-is-not-worked-in-irb-is-it-bug/124102 "2007-12-24T19:16:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mokkai)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2007, 7:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/upper-arrow-key-is-not-worked-in-irb-is-it-bug/124102/1 "2007-12-24T19:16:25Z")

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i manually download ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz

i installed into /home/username/package/ruby (using --prefix)  
and add the manual path into PATH variable

when i was working in irb

if i press upper arrow key then ‘^[[A’ will come .after that if i press  
enter then my irb will quit.

username@ubuntu7.04:~$ which irb  
/home/username/package/ruby/bin/irb  
username@ubuntu7.04:~$ irb  
irb(main):001:0\> 5  
=\> 5  
irb(main):002:0\> ^[[A -----\>here i pressed upper arrow key  
username@subuntu7.04:~$

is it bug ? or is there any solution for this ?  
(because i want to work in irb for long time)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mokkai)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/upper-arrow-key-is-not-worked-in-irb-is-it-bug/124102/2 "2007-12-24T19:37:45Z")

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Pokkai D. wrote:

> i manually download ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
> 
> i installed into /home/username/package/ruby (using --prefix)  
> and add the manual path into PATH variable
> 
> when i was working in irb
> 
> if i press upper arrow key then ‘^[[A’ will come .after that if i press  
> enter then my irb will quit.

Do you have the readline and readline-devel packages installed? If you  
install them (whether using your OS’s package manager or building from  
source), then when you build ruby it will recognize them and irb will  
use readline, which should give you the desired up-arrow behavior.

On my Ubuntu system these packages are called libreadline5 and  
libreadline5-dev.

You can check in your ruby-1.8.6/ext/readline whether the ruby wrapper  
got built or not. Just run ‘ruby extconf.rb’ there and see if some  
checks fail.

After installing the readline packages, these checks should succeed. In  
that case, do ‘make && make install’ in the same dir and irb should work  
right.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mokkai)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2007, 9:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/upper-arrow-key-is-not-worked-in-irb-is-it-bug/124102/3 "2007-12-24T21:07:57Z")

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Joel VanderWerf wrote:

> Do you have the readline and readline-devel packages installed? If you  
> install them (whether using your OS’s package manager or building from  
> source), then when you build ruby it will recognize them and irb will  
> use readline, which should give you the desired up-arrow behavior.
> 
> On my Ubuntu system these packages are called libreadline5 and  
> libreadline5-dev.
> 
> You can check in your ruby-1.8.6/ext/readline whether the ruby wrapper  
> got built or not. Just run ‘ruby extconf.rb’ there and see if some  
> checks fail.
> 
> After installing the readline packages, these checks should succeed. In  
> that case, do ‘make && make install’ in the same dir and irb should work  
> right.

thank you Joel VanderWerf …now irb working well .but

I am going to use ri ,it tell to “make install-doc”

when i type “make install-doc” at finally  
below errors are raised

```
               mmmmc................................c....c..c...
                         zlib.c: 

```

mcccccccccccccccccc…  
Generating RI…  
/home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/yaml.rb:9:in `require': no such file to load -- stringio (LoadError) from /home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/yaml.rb:9 from /home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/rdoc/ri/ri_descriptions.rb:1:in`require’  
from  
/home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/rdoc/ri/ri\_descriptions.rb:1  
from  
/home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/rdoc/ri/ri\_reader.rb:1:in  
`require' from /home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/rdoc/ri/ri_reader.rb:1 from /home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/rdoc/generators/ri_generator.rb:46:in`require’  
from  
/home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/rdoc/generators/ri\_generator.rb:46  
from  
/home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/rdoc/rdoc.rb:273:in `require' from /home/username/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111/lib/rdoc/rdoc.rb:273:in`document’  
from ./bin/rdoc:63  
make: \*\*\* [rdoc] Error 1  
username@supermail:~/package/ruby-1.8.6-p111$

thank you

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mokkai)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2007, 9:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/upper-arrow-key-is-not-worked-in-irb-is-it-bug/124102/4 "2007-12-24T21:10:24Z")

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i tried to install ‘stringio’ and some related package  
(by synaptic package manager in ubuntu7.04) .

but can’t get corresponding package to solve above error.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mokkai)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2007, 9:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/upper-arrow-key-is-not-worked-in-irb-is-it-bug/124102/5 "2007-12-24T21:18:01Z")

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actually when i install

i opened “ext/Setup” file and changed from  
#option nodynamic  
to  
option nodynamic

at first line …  
so i got this error .

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mokkai)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2007, 9:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/upper-arrow-key-is-not-worked-in-irb-is-it-bug/124102/6 "2007-12-24T21:42:19Z")

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Ryan D. wrote:

> what an f’in PITA.  
> There’s no need to reference unspeakable acts with middle-eastern  
> flatbreads, or any baked good.

A simple rule for happiness: build ruby from source, and let it go in  
/usr/local (or anywhere but /usr). For the developer, that has the  
advantage, on any OS, of (a) letting you tinker with the interpreter and  
(b) building with architecture-specific optimizations.

Use apt-get (or whatever) to get the few dependencies that are not  
commonly installed (such as readline), or build them yourself.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mokkai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mokkai)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2007, 9:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/upper-arrow-key-is-not-worked-in-irb-is-it-bug/124102/7 "2007-12-24T21:26:30Z")

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On Dec 24, 2007, at 12:10 , Pokkai D. wrote:

> i tried to install ‘stringio’ and some related package  
> (by synaptic package manager in ubuntu7.04) .
> 
> but can’t get corresponding package to solve above error.

this is _precisely_ why I won’t use ubuntu for ruby development.

what an f’in PITA.