Ruby Environment Variables

Question

Hello,

I am experiencing a strange problem with Ruby and Environment variables.

I am currently on a x64 machine running Windows Server 2008 R2

If I do the following in ruby: puts ENV['PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE']

I expect to see AMD64, however, Ruby is displaying x86

If I do: echo %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%, in the command prompt, I am greeted with AMD64

My Ruby version is: ruby 1.8.6 (2010-02-04 patchlevel 398) [i386-mingw32]

As far as I am aware, ENV['PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE'] should just read my environment variable...

Any ideas?

Cheers, Gareth

Answer 1

It does read your environment variable, but since your ruby executable is compiled for 32-bit, it runs in a 32-bit environment where the value of PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE is indeed "x86".

If you put system "echo %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%" in your ruby script, you will see that it will also output "x86".