rejecting "$ rails new blog"

Newbie here,

Following this tutorial that says: $ rails new blog.

I type it into the shell window and get this: '$' is not recognized as an internal or external command.

What's up with that?

The '$' just represents the command prompt that your shell window presents to you (it's the default command prompt in Bash on UNIX). You don't need to type it. Just type "rails new blog".

Chris

You're not supposed to type the $ - it's just what the command prompt looks like on some setups.

Fred

It's a convention in many tutorials to show you the dollar sign as an example of your shell prompt. It just means "as a regular user, type this", as opposed to a # prompt, meaning you have to su to root first. Don't type either character if you see them at the beginning of a sample shell command line.

Walter

Is this an April Fools joke?