Using the Sass interactive mode and SassScript

The interactive mode of Sass comes with the Sass gem. You can use it after installing Sass. In the Installing Sass for command line usage recipe of this chapter, you can read how to install Sass.

Take a look at the following steps to understand how to use the Sass interactive mode:

As it has already been made clear in the introduction of this recipe, you can use the interactive shell to test the property values set by SassScript. The interactive shell does not allow you to use variables or mixins, but you can make use of Sass's built-in functions. Chapter 5, Built-in Functions, of this book will introduce you to the useful built-in functions of Sass. The function used in the fourth step of this recipe is an example of a built-in function.

To quit once you have entered the interactive mode, just type Ctrl + D.

The Compass gem has an interactive shell that is available too. You can start Compass's interactive shell by running the following command in your console:

compass interactive

In the interactive shell, you can run SassScript and you can also test the results of the Compass helper functions. Try the following command to evaluate the append-selector() helper function:

>> append-selector("p, div, span", ".bar")

The preceding command will give the following output:

"p.bar, div.bar, span.bar"

In your Sass code, you should use the preceding result inside an interpolation escape: #{ }.