Beginner Q

So, when i first started to learn ruby about a week or two ago, my
cousin who showed me ruby had me start on a program called
hackety-hack, which is i type of tutorial thing, it kind of gives
programs a sort of gui also. But i have noticed you cant do some of the
same commands as on the irb main. In hackety-hack there was an
ask command, so you could do things like
var = ask(“how old are you”)…

Im wondering if/ or what is the acctual ask command?? Because im
trying to write a program for my dad a chef which vendors have the
cheapest prices, and its getting annoying writing out all their prices
into 2 different arrays. it would be nice if it could be like
Array_1 = ask("put in the 1st vendors prices)
Array_2 = ask("put in 2nd vendors prices) and then i could go on and
subtract the two arrays

Sorry if this is a totaly idiotic question :(!?
Much thanx for anyones help!