` (backtick) is unexpected token

Question

I'm doing some command line executions I learned in this blog post such as system or IO.popen on the file, and am getting errors.

Why is the backtick appearing, what does it mean, and how do I continue? Please explain.

 system('./err.rb')
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `'./err.rb''

Similarily, when I run IO.popen:

output = IO.popen('./err.rb')
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

Answer 1

That's not ruby you're typing things into, it's your shell bash. Assuming you've got ruby installed properly, type irb to get a ruby prompt and you should be able to proceed from there.