Unable to run Haml or Sass on Terminal. Using OSX Lion. RVM, GCC, Ruby, Rails, Haml, Sass installed - osx-lion

Question

I'm very new at this so I'll give as many details as possible:
Using Mac OSX 10.7.4
Installed today:
TextMate 1.5.11
RVM 1.15.5 by Wayne Seguin
GCC 10.7
Ruby 1.9.3
Rails 3.2.8
Haml 3.1.7
Sass 3.2.1
Haml instructions:
To run Haml from the command line, just use
haml input.haml output.html
When I input the above command, my Terminal responds:
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - input.haml
Use --trace for backtrace.
When I input:
--trace
It returns:
-bash: --trace: command not found
Having similar issue with Sass:
$ sass --watch style.scss:style.css
>>> Sass is watching for changes. Press Ctrl-C to stop.
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - style.scss
Use --trace for backtrace.
Do I need to create the input.haml and output.haml files first and put them in a directory somewhere? If so, can someone give me a very specific path where the folder needs to go?
Similar question for the Sass files -- do they need to be in a particular folder for the Terminal to locate them?
And.. unsure why --trace is not working...
Can someone advise me on how to troubleshoot this? I am only familiar with HTML/CSS, and have been asked to learn Haml/Sass by my team.

Answer 1

input.haml should exist and should be a haml file. output.html is where the output will be stored (and will be overwritten if it exists)
Those files can be anywhere you want, but if they aren't in the current directory you'll need to adjust the path accordingly.
Similarly for sass style.scss must exist and the resulting CSS will be output to style.css

Answer 2

You're not using --trace command properly. In UNIX command line, programs that run in command line (also called cli as in command line interface) use options known as flags that begin with - or --. So without ever having used HAML code, I see that this is a flag used like this:
➜ ~ uname -a
Darwin Angel.local 12.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 12.0.0: Sun Jun 24 23:00:16 PDT 2012; root:xnu-2050.7.9~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
➜ ~ cat > test.haml
#content
.left.column
%h2 Welcome to our site!
%p= print_information
.right.column
= render :partial => "sidebar"
^C
➜ ~ haml test.haml
Exception on line 4: undefined local variable or method `print_information' for #<Object:0x007f9844896cd0>
Use --trace for backtrace.
Use --trace for backtrace.
➜ ~ haml test.haml --trace
test.haml:4:in `block in render': undefined local variable or method `print_information' for #<Object:0x007fd83b9f8650> (NameError)
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/haml-3.1.7/lib/haml/engine.rb:191:in `eval'
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/haml-3.1.7/lib/haml/engine.rb:191:in `render'
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/haml-3.1.7/lib/haml/exec.rb:281:in `process_result'
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/haml-3.1.7/lib/haml/exec.rb:41:in `parse'
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/haml-3.1.7/lib/haml/exec.rb:21:in `parse!'
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/haml-3.1.7/bin/haml:9:in `<top (required)>'
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/bin/haml:19:in `load'
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/bin/haml:19:in `<main>'
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/bin/ruby_noexec_wrapper:14:in `eval'
from /Users/atma/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/bin/ruby_noexec_wrapper:14:in `<main>'
➜ ~
Apart from that, I just installed haml gem on MacOSX 10.8 via RVM and works fine. Running ruby filename.haml might come with a helpful message also.

Answer 3

Using Google Chat screenshare, my online co-workers looked at my Terminal activity and then gave me some commands to use so that the file(s) could be found. Next, they had me put a simple line of "Hello World" in my input.haml document for testing purposes.
Today haml can now find the file(s), and when I gave it the command regarding the input.haml and output.html files, it successfully transferred the data from input to output.
So the problem was my lack of knowledge regarding how to get to the correct directory in Terminal.
Doras-MacBook-Pro:~ whisperland$ cd/Users/whisperland/documents/ haml input.haml
-bash: cd/Users/whisperland/documents/: No such file or directory
Doras-MacBook-Pro:~ whisperland$ cd documents
Doras-MacBook-Pro:documents whisperland$ ls
document.haml output.html
input.haml typography.rtf
Doras-MacBook-Pro:documents whisperland$ haml input.haml
hello world
Doras-MacBook-Pro:documents whisperland$ haml input.haml output.html