My templates won't come up properly. The input form is adding extra characters to the URL query like this:
Instead of /look/at being passed, it is passing %5Clook/%5Cat and of course the controller can't find that template. If I enter /look/at manually in the url, it returns the template with the correct response.

I am running Mandrake 10.2, and the "hello" example worked but these aren't working. I have checked the typing very carefully, and posted requests for assistance on the RonR forums which resulted in a. a suggestion that there was a character escaping problem of unknown source and b. maybe I am running the wrong version of Ruby or Rails.
My Ruby is 1.8.2 which this book says is acceptable, and my Rails is 1.8.6 which should the latest.

Thanks much for any assistance. I am kind of stuck here until I can resolve such an elementary problem.

Ever get this square? Same issue here..nothing in errata and have dowloaded code from book.
os: xp
ruby: 1.82
rails: 1.85

Very...very...frustrating.

No, and I really ran all over town with it. I ended up downloading and installing a more recent version of Ruby ... 1.8.6 ... and now I can't get webrick to run at all. Too many other things to take care of to spend much more time on this book and its examples a the moment. Too bad, as I expected to be through most of the tutorials by now.

I am going to try the OReilly book soon. Will post back if that goes more smoothly. It was all coded on an XP platform, fwiw. I am going to stay with Linux for security reasons.

I'm using Mandriva also and had the same problem on page 124.
Got it to work by doing this:

changed '<form action = "\look\at" >'
to '<form action = "look/at" >'

ditto for similar examples in this chapter

It looks like it all depends on the web browser you are using. The code works fine on IE, but does not work on Firefox. So I found out the hard way!

i did the same as Jamie, just changed the \ to / and it worked