Is there a way to get out of a “hung” state in IRB?

Question

When using irb or rails console, I sometimes get stuck. For example, I forget a closing quote, so when I press enter, it\'s still waiting on that.<

Answer 1

Press Control + D once or twice. That should do it.

Answer 2

when you get recursion or Ctrl+D doesn't work

you can kill current process ($$)

exec("kill -9 #{$$}")