Ruby Program Error: NoMethodError

Question

I typed up a simple Ruby code for a tutorial question, as shown below.

#Grandma is deaf!  
puts "Hey Sonny! It's your lovely Grandmother! How are you?"  
response = gets.chomp  
while response != "BYE"  
  if response != response.upcase  
    puts "Huh?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"  
  else  
    puts "NO! NOT SINCE " + (1930 + rand(21)).to_s + "!"  
  end  
  response = gets.chomp  
end  
puts "GOOD BYE, SONNY!"    

However, when I run this, the window displays:

Hey Sonny! It's your lovely Grandmother! How are you?  
NoMethodError: private method ‘chomp’ called for nil:NilClass

at top level in deafGrandma.rb at line 3

I don't understand why chomp is not recognized. I'm using textMate on a Mac I have Ruby version 1.8.7, which should be fine. Any solutions?

Thank you so much :)

Answer 1

If you are using the Cmd-R shortcut in TextMate to run your code, you will not be able to supply it input because textmate only supports output. You will have to run it in a terminal instead. The reason you are getting that error is because $stdin is closed, so gets returns nil.

Answer 2

Adrian is right about interactive input being disabled in TextMate 1.5.9 (r1510). See this post from TextMate's developer.

However, you can upgrade to a "cutting-edge" TextMate release that restores interactive input, and will allow you to run the above code just fine. Go to TextMate's Preferences -> Software Updates and make sure Automatically check for updates is checked.

Select Cutting-Edge in the Watch For: dropdown menu. Finally, click Check Now. The latest release (r1589) should automatically download. Interactive input is re-enabled in this release.