What does __FILE__ mean in Ruby?

It is a reference to the current file name. In the file foo.rb, __FILE__ would be interpreted as "foo.rb".

Edit: Ruby 1.9.2 and 1.9.3 appear to behave a little differently from what Luke Bayes said in his comment. With these files:

# test.rb
puts __FILE__
require './dir2/test.rb'

# dir2/test.rb
puts __FILE__

Running ruby test.rb will output

test.rb
/full/path/to/dir2/test.rb

In Ruby, the Windows version anyways, I just checked and __FILE__ does not contain the full path to the file. Instead it contains the path to the file relative to where it's being executed from.

In PHP __FILE__ is the full path (which in my opinion is preferable). This is why, in order to make your paths portable in Ruby, you really need to use this:

File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "relative/path/to/file")

I should note that in Ruby 1.9.1 __FILE__ contains the full path to the file, the above description was for when I used Ruby 1.8.7.

In order to be compatible with both Ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.1 (not sure about 1.9) you should require files by using the construct I showed above.

The value of __FILE__ is a relative path that is created and stored (but never updated) when your file is loaded. This means that if you have any calls to Dir.chdir anywhere else in your application, this path will expand incorrectly.

puts __FILE__
Dir.chdir '../../'
puts __FILE__

One workaround to this problem is to store the expanded value of __FILE__ outside of any application code. As long as your require statements are at the top of your definitions (or at least before any calls to Dir.chdir), this value will continue to be useful after changing directories.

$MY_FILE_PATH = File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__))

# open class and do some stuff that changes directory

puts $MY_FILE_PATH

__FILE__ is the filename with extension of the file containing the code being executed.

In foo.rb, __FILE__ would be "foo.rb".

If foo.rb were in the dir /home/josh then File.dirname(__FILE__) would return /home/josh.