require 'rubygems' not working

Question

when I type irb> require 'rubygems' it returns false. I have many gems in my rails app that are obviously working - rake, activerecord, etc. What could be going wrong here? thanks.

Ruby 1.8.6. Rails 1.2.6

Answer 1

It throws an exception if it doesn't work, it returns false if it is already loaded.