What is the difference between require_relative and require in Ruby?

Question

What is the difference between require_relative and require in Ruby?

Answer 1

The top answers are correct, but deeply technical. For those newer to Ruby:

• require_relative will most likely be used to bring in code from another file that you wrote.

for example, what if you have data in ~/my-project/data.rb and you want to include that in ~/my-project/solution.rb? in solution.rb you would add require_relative 'data'.

it is important to note these files do not need to be in the same directory. require_relative '../../folder1/folder2/data' is also valid.

• require will most likely be used to bring in code from a library someone else wrote.

for example, what if you want to use one of the helper functions provided in the active_support library? you'll need to install the gem with gem install activesupport and then in the file require 'active_support'.

require 'active_support/all'
"FooBar".underscore

---

Said differently--

• require_relative requires a file specifically pointed to relative to the file that calls it.

• require requires a file included in the $LOAD_PATH.