[TxMt] Ruby question on TextMate

I'm a Ruby newbie. I'm using TexMate Version 1.5.9 (1510) on Mac OS X Version 10.6.4. I'm trying to write a small Ruby snippet to get keyboard input as follows:

puts "What is your name? " name = gets.chomp puts "Hello #{name}"

I get the following TextMate error:

*NoMethodError:* private method ‘chomp’ called for nil:NilClass

*at top level*txmt://open?line=2&url=file:///Users/marcc/Documents/marccTechnical/Ruby/myRubyPrograms/sayhello.rb

in *sayhello.rb* at line 2

Program exited with code #1 after 0.02 seconds.

I've googled pretty much every piece of information on Ruby keyboard input, changed that little snippet many times accordingly, but I could never get it to work.

I realize that this question is not directly related to TextMate, but I'm hoping somebody can help me.

Thanks in advance,

Marc