Is there a shorter way to require a file in the same directory in ruby?

Question

Is there a shorter way to require a file located in the same directory (as the script being executed)?

require File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/some_other_script') 

I read that require "my_script" and require "./my_script" will actually load the script twice (ruby will not recognize that it is actually the same script), and this is the reason why File.expand_path is recommended: if it is used every time the script is required, then it will only be loaded once.

It seems weird to me that a concise language like Ruby does not seem to have a shorter solution. For example, python simply has this:

import .some_other_module_in_the_same_directory 

I guess I could monkey-patch require... but that's just evil! ;-)

Answer 1

Since ruby 1.9 you can use require_relative.

Check the latest doc for require_relative or another version of the Core API.

Answer 2

Just require filename.

Yes, it will import it twice if you specify it as filename and ./filename, so don't do that. You're not specifying the .rb, so don't specify the path. I usually put the bulk of my application logic into a file in lib, and then have a script in bin that looks something like this:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby  $: << File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "/../lib") require 'app.rb' App.new.run(ARGV) 

Another advantage is that I find it easier to do unit testing if the loading the application logic doesn't automatically start executing it.