Is it safe to delete the .gem directory for a RubyGem I installed in the wrong place?

Question

Hi, I wanted to install open4 so I typed
gem install open4

which gave me the following warnings:
WARNING: Installing to ~/.gem since /var/lib/gems/1.8 and
/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin aren't both writable.
WARNING: You don't have /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.8/bin in your PATH,
gem executables will not run.

I then did
sudo install open4
and it appears to have installed.

How could I go about removing the extra installation from my home directory? Would just deleting the ~/.gem directory be appropriate or would that be harmful?

Answer 1

Okay, I figured it out (without manually deleting the directories.) Typing
ruby env and looking under "GEM PATHS" :
- GEM PATHS:
- /var/lib/gems/1.8
- /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.8
The second line referring to the erroneous installation.

I then did
gem uninstall open4 -i /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.8
and got
Successfully uninstalled open4-1.0.1

Hooray.