Ruby: How to make IRB print structure for Arrays and Hashes

ruby irb
neezer picture neezer · Mar 31, 2009 · Viewed 55.9k times · Source

When I make a new array/hash in irb, it prints out a nice format to show the structure, ex.

["value1", "value2", "value3"]
{"key1" => "value1"}

... but when I try to print out my variables using puts, I get them collapsed:

value1
value2
value3
key1
value1

I gather that puts is not the right command for what I want, but what is? I want to be able to view my variables in irb in the first format, not the second.

Answer

dmondark picture dmondark · Mar 31, 2009

You can either use the inspect method:

a=["value1", "value2", "value3"]
puts a.inspect

Or, even better, use the pp (pretty print) lib:

require 'pp'
a=["value1", "value2", "value3"]
pp a

Related questions

how to get the current working directory's absolute path from irb

I'm running Ruby on Windows though I don't know if that should make a difference. All I want to do is get the current working directory's absolute path. Is this possible from irb? Apparently from a script it's possible using …

Read More
Ruby: How to load a file into interactive ruby console (IRB)?

I am using IRB (interactive ruby console) to learn how to program with Ruby. How do I load a file into the console if I write my programs in a text editor first?

Read More
A JSON text must at least contain two octets

I received this error, and I couldn't find any reasonable answer to this question, so I thought I'd write a summary of the problem. If you run this snippet in irb: JSON.parse( nil ) You'll see the following error: TypeError: …

Read More