Is Ruby really an interpreted language if all of i

Question

In the chosen answer for this question about Blue Ruby, Chuck says:

All of the current Ruby implementations are compiled to bytecode. Contrary to SAP's claims, as of Ruby 1.9, MRI itself includes a bytecode compiler, though the ability to save the compiled bytecode to disk disappeared somewhere in the process of merging the YARV virtual machine. JRuby is compiled into Java .class files. I don't have a lot of details on MagLev, but it seems safe to say it will take that road as well.

I'm confused about this compilation/interpretation issue with respect to Ruby.

I learned that Ruby is an interpreted language and that's why when I save changes to my Ruby files I don't need to re-build the project.

But if all of the Ruby implementations now are compiled, is it still fair to say that Ruby is an interpreted language? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Answer 1

You can run Ruby programs interactively using irb, the Interactive Ruby Shell. While it may generate intermediate bytecode, it's certainly not a "compiler" in the traditional sense.