DATA and require

ruby-talk
1

Hi,

I have a file that uses END and DATA to read in a large
string. It works fine when I run it directly.

But when I require that file in another one it says

“uninitialized constant DATA”

Why?

Regards,

Karsten Magnuaer

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2

coma_killen@fastmail.fm wrote:

Hi,

I have a file that uses END and DATA to read in a large
string. It works fine when I run it directly.

But when I require that file in another one it says

“uninitialized constant DATA”

Why?

I guess DATA is associated with the $0 file, i.e., the file that was
first passed to the ruby interpreter. For example:

$ cat a.rb
require ‘b’
END
In DATA of a.rb

$ cat b.rb
p DATA.gets(nil)
END
In DATA of b.rb

$ ruby a.rb
“In DATA of a.rb\n”

$ ruby b.rb
“In DATA of b.rb\n”