ruby - How do I drop to the IRB prompt from a running script?

Question

Can I drop to an IRB prompt from a running Ruby script?

I want to run a script, but then have it give me an IRB prompt at a point in the program with the current state of the program, but not just by running rdebug and having a breakpoint.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1144560/how-do-i-drop-to-the-irb-prompt-from-a-running-script

Answer 1

Pry (an IRB alternative) also lets you do this, in fact it was designed from the ground up for exactly this use case :)

It's as easy as putting binding.pry at the point you want to start the session:

require 'pry'
x = 10
binding.pry

And inside the session:

pry(main)> puts x
=> 10

Check out the website: http://pry.github.com

Pry let's you:

• drop into a session at any point in your code
• view method source code
• view method documentation (not using RI so you dont have to pre-generate it)
• pop in and out of different contexts
• syntax highlighting
• gist integration
• view and replay history
• open editors to edit methods using edit obj.my_method syntax

A tonne more great and original features