On Jun 30, 2006, at 9:01 PM, dave rose wrote:

>  i get a lot of errors when i require 'date' in irb what's wrong
>  => ["c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8",
>  "c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/i386-ms
>  t", "c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby", "c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8",
>  "c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1
>  i386-mswin32", "."]
>  irb(main):003:0> require 'c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb'
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:238: warning: already initialized  
>  constant
>  MONTH
>  ES
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:243: warning: already initialized  
>  constant
>  DAYNA
> 
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:247: warning: already initialized  
>  constant
>  ABBR_
>  THNAMES
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:250: warning: already initialized  
>  constant
>  ABBR_
>  NAMES
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:254: warning: already initialized  
>  constant
>  ITALY
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:258: warning: already initialized  
>  constant
>  ENGLA
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:262: warning: already initialized  
>  constant
>  JULIA
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:266: warning: already initialized  
>  constant
>  GREGO
>  N
>  NameError: undefined method `today' for `DateTime'
>          from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:1261:in `undef_method'
>          from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:1261
>          from
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:18:in
>  quire__'
>          from
>  c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:18:in
>  quire'
> 
>  -- 
>  Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> 

You're trying too hard. Just do
require 'date'

(What's happening is that date has already been required and added to  
$LOADED_FEATURES. But since you use the _full_ path to date it  
doesn't realize it's been required and requires the file again,  
giving you all those lovely errors. (The reason date has been already  
required is probably that you have RUBYOPT set to load rubygems))