clear all variables in rails console

Question

can any body tell me what command is used to clear all variables in rails console?

e.g.

1.9.1 :001 > permissions = {:show => true}
 => {:show=>true} 
1.9.1 :001 > foo = "bar"
 => "bar"

I need a command that can get all variables reset to nil without a restart of rails console itself.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

local_variables.each { |e| eval("#{e} = nil") }

local_variables returns the list of symbols of all local variables in the current scope

a, b = 5, 10
local_variables # => [:b, :a]

Using each you can iterate over this list an use eval to assign their values to nil.

You can also do the same thing with instance_variables and global_variables. For example

(local_variables + instance_variables).each { |e| eval("#{e} = nil") }

---

By the way, if you are going to use it more than once, it might be helpful to define such method in ~/.irbrc file to make it accessible for all irb sessions (didn't test it in rails console).

class Binding
  def clear
    eval %q{ local_variables.each { |e| eval("#{e} = nil") } }
  end
end

Then, inside irb session

a = 5
binding.clear
a # => nil