Is there a way to get out of a "hung" state in IRB?

Question

When using irb or rails console, I sometimes get stuck. For example, I forget a closing quote, so when I press enter, it's still waiting on that.

Sometimes I can get out of this (by suppyling the closing quote, for example), but sometimes I can't. If not, I usually do the following:

# Suspend the irb or console process
(Control + Z)

# Kill the last suspended process
kill -9 %

This is annoying and disrupts whatever I was doing in the console. What I'd like is an equivalent to Control + C on the command line, to say "forget that - give me a new prompt", so I can continue working in the console.

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

Press Control + D once or twice. That should do it.