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Ruby Ruby Basics Strings String Interpolation

Christopher Phillips
Christopher Phillips
10,061 Points

Curly braces & square brackets not available to me within IRB on my keyboard

I live in Finland and my keyboard is a Steelseries APEX M500 with a nordic layout. I can type both bracket types into any text field {[]} and the command is CTRL+ALT+7/8/9/0. However, using this same command within IRB results in nothing being typed. Does anyone have an alternate solution? I have no other text editor (read: console) to test if this is restricted to the Workspaces editor or not. I sure hope this isn't a deal breaker learning Ruby via Treehouse because as of right now, I'll have to skip IRB whenever the teacher is demonstrating anything with these brackets.

Jay McGavren
Jay McGavren
Treehouse Teacher

Thanks for the detailed summary! I doubt this will fix anything, but what OS and browser are you using?

Is it just IRB that's affected? Are you able to type those characters into the main Bash shell (after exiting out of IRB)?

I'll file a bug with our development team. If you can give me the above info, that would be useful to add to the report. Meanwhile, I hate to suggest this, but you might try switching to a USA layout and see if that works.

2 Answers

You can re-map your keys, so other keys can use those special symbols. Find out how on your current operating system.

Christopher Phillips
Christopher Phillips
10,061 Points

Hi Jay!

Thanks for your answer. TBH, I never really use the extra characters for the nordic layout. I'm visiting the US in about a month and thought about picking up a standard US layout keyboard there. Great idea! (also an excuse to get another keyboard :) :) )

Really enjoying this course!