Why doesn't relative_require work on Ruby 1.8.6?

Question

I\'m learning Ruby (using version 1.8.6) on Windows 7.

When I try to run the stock_stats.rb program below, I get the following error:

Answer 1

require_relative doesn't exist in your version of Ruby. You could upgrade Ruby, install the backports gem and require 'backports/1.9.1/kernel/require/relative' but the easiest fix will be to change your require to:

require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), 'csv_reader')

Answer 2

Edit:

Back in the days where this question was asked it referred to Ruby 1.8.6 where there was no require_relative. By now Ruby 1.8.6 is outdated and shouldn't be used anymore.

Original:

There is simply no method name require_relative. You can use require there aswell.

The require_relative function is included in an extension project to the Ruby core libraries, found here: http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/extensions

You should be able to install them with gem install extensions. Then in your code add the following line before the require_relative:

require 'extensions/all'