IRB means “Interactive Ruby Shell”, letting us execute ruby expressions from the standart input.

To start, type irb into your shell. You can write anything in Ruby, from simple expressions:

$ irb
2.1.4 :001 > 2+2
=> 4

to complex cases like methods:

2.1.4 :001> def method
2.1.4 :002?>   puts "Hello World"
2.1.4 :003?> end
=> :method
2.1.4 :004 > method
Hello World
=> nil