Comments on: Setting up the Interactive Ruby Shell (IRB) for non-english keyboards on Windows XP

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:07:11 +0000

rman, that worked like a charm. Thanks!

Danish keyboard.

By: rman

rman — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:53:44 +0000

You can manipulate the init.rb file (located in $ruby_installtion\lib\ruby\versionxxx\irb)

Scroll down and set the following line to:
@CONF[:USE_READLINE] = false

(comment the following stuff on the same line: #unless defined?(ReadlineInputMethod))
Hope this helps

By: Emmanuel Pirsch

Emmanuel Pirsch — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:27:28 +0000

This solution did not work for me, but changing the "M-" with "\e" in the .inputrc file solved the problem for good.

By: JFred

JFred — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:47:48 +0000

As long as you’re talking Windows XP. Start it this way. Put this into console.cmd:

DQpAc3RhcnQgInJhaWxzIGNvbnNvbGUiIC9NQVggcnVieSBzY3JpcHRcY29uc29sZQ0K

Then just run ‘console’ from the command line, and it will start up in its own window.

I found that using the –noreadline option makes it work better. Otherwise history gets confused after you enter a long line. Tab completion is less important than history, for me.

By: flip

flip — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:08:06 +0000

doesn’t work for me :(

checked everything twice:
1. set home-path to a path with .inputrc
2. the .inputrc in the home-path has the above lines and a free line at the end (tried different encodings (dos/unix/utf8))
3. in console.rb i modified the irc-call to
exec “#{options[:irb]} #{libs} –simple-prompt –readline”

if i now start the console, still no special chars like [] are possible. running with –noreadline works well, but i really miss the console functions like to browse with the arrow keys through the console history.

any idea?

thanks!

cheers,
flip

By: tayfun

tayfun — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:33:05 +0000

Hello,
Thanks for the solution but I find that this does not work for the Turkish keyboard. Can you direct me on how a solution can be found for the Turkish keyboard case? Another .inputrc for example?

[--noreadline works but I want tab completion too]

By: Michel

Michel — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 14:33:10 +0000

–noreadline also works with French (AltGr)

By: eduardo

eduardo — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:20:52 +0000

Spanish keyboard here… easyest workaround I’ve found:

DQppcmIgLS1ub3JlYWRsaW5lDQo=

By: Martin Dittus

Martin Dittus — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 16:43:57 +0000

–noreadline works well for me up to the point where you want to exit irb — ^C, ^D, ^Z have no effect. So thanks for this .inputrc workaround.

To quickly set up the HOME env variable you can also simply put this in your irb.bat:

c2V0IEhPTUU9JUhPTUVQQVRIJQ==

To create .inputrc:

Y2QgJUhPTUVQQVRIJQ0KZWRpdCAuaW5wdXRyYw==

Or do this:

Y2QgJUhPTUVQQVRIJQ0KY29weSBjb24gLmlucHV0cmM=

… then paste Peter’s .inputrc content above (with a right mouse click), make sure you end the input with a blank line, hit ^Z and enter.

10 years time to forget all about DOS, and it just came back in a rush… ;)

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:54:57 +0000

I guess you are supposed to use newlines in the .inputrc content. At least that was how I got it to work. Thanks anyway for pointing out the direction!

By: Peter Krantz

Peter Krantz — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 18:12:19 +0000

Ben, that would make special characters work, but tab-completion fail.

By: Ben St. John

Ben St. John — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 16:55:46 +0000

For me, invoking irb with the –noreadline made things work without requiring the .inputrc file (which windows explorer doesn’t like as a name).

(perhaps setting the INPUTRC environment variable to point the file (whatever it’s name) would also do the trick.

Ben