Encoding conversion class.
Mixin module that provides the following:
Access to the CGI environment variables as methods. See documentation to the CGI class for a list of these variables. The methods are exposed by removing the leading HTTP_ (if it exists) and downcasing the name. For example, auth_type will return the environment variable AUTH_TYPE, and accept will return the value for HTTP_ACCEPT.
Access to cookies, including the cookies attribute.
Access to parameters, including the params attribute, and overloading [] to perform parameter value lookup by key.
The initialize_query method, for initializing the above mechanisms, handling multipart forms, and allowing the class to be used in “offline” mode.
Utility methods for using the RubyGems API.
Helper methods for both Gem::Installer and Gem::Uninstaller
An Array is an ordered, integer-indexed collection of objects, called elements. Any object may be an Array element.
Array indexing starts at 0, as in C or Java.
A positive index is an offset from the first element:
Index 0 indicates the first element.
Index 1 indicates the second element.
…
A negative index is an offset, backwards, from the end of the array:
Index -1 indicates the last element.
Index -2 indicates the next-to-last element.
…
A non-negative index is in range if it is smaller than the size of the array. For a 3-element array:
Indexes 0 through 2 are in range.
Index 3 is out of range.
A negative index is in range if its absolute value is not larger than the size of the array. For a 3-element array:
Indexes -1 through -3 are in range.
Index -4 is out of range.
A new array can be created by using the literal constructor []. Arrays can contain different types of objects. For example, the array below contains an Integer, a String and a Float:
ary = [1, "two", 3.0] #=> [1, "two", 3.0]
An array can also be created by explicitly calling Array.new with zero, one (the initial size of the Array) or two arguments (the initial size and a default object).
ary = Array.new #=> [] Array.new(3) #=> [nil, nil, nil] Array.new(3, true) #=> [true, true, true]
Note that the second argument populates the array with references to the same object. Therefore, it is only recommended in cases when you need to instantiate arrays with natively immutable objects such as Symbols, numbers, true or false.
To create an array with separate objects a block can be passed instead. This method is safe to use with mutable objects such as hashes, strings or other arrays:
Array.new(4) {Hash.new} #=> [{}, {}, {}, {}] Array.new(4) {|i| i.to_s } #=> ["0", "1", "2", "3"]
This is also a quick way to build up multi-dimensional arrays:
empty_table = Array.new(3) {Array.new(3)} #=> [[nil, nil, nil], [nil, nil, nil], [nil, nil, nil]]
An array can also be created by using the Array() method, provided by Kernel, which tries to call to_ary, then to_a on its argument.
Array({:a => "a", :b => "b"}) #=> [[:a, "a"], [:b, "b"]]
In addition to the methods it mixes in through the Enumerable module, the Array class has proprietary methods for accessing, searching and otherwise manipulating arrays.
Some of the more common ones are illustrated below.
Elements in an array can be retrieved using the Array#[] method. It can take a single integer argument (a numeric index), a pair of arguments (start and length) or a range. Negative indices start counting from the end, with -1 being the last element.
arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] arr[2] #=> 3 arr[100] #=> nil arr[-3] #=> 4 arr[2, 3] #=> [3, 4, 5] arr[1..4] #=> [2, 3, 4, 5] arr[1..-3] #=> [2, 3, 4]
Another way to access a particular array element is by using the at method
arr.at(0) #=> 1
The slice method works in an identical manner to Array#[].
To raise an error for indices outside of the array bounds or else to provide a default value when that happens, you can use fetch.
arr = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f'] arr.fetch(100) #=> IndexError: index 100 outside of array bounds: -6...6 arr.fetch(100, "oops") #=> "oops"
The special methods first and last will return the first and last elements of an array, respectively.
arr.first #=> 1 arr.last #=> 6
To return the first n elements of an array, use take
arr.take(3) #=> [1, 2, 3]
drop does the opposite of take, by returning the elements after n elements have been dropped:
arr.drop(3) #=> [4, 5, 6]
Array Arrays keep track of their own length at all times. To query an array about the number of elements it contains, use length, count or size.
browsers = ['Chrome', 'Firefox', 'Safari', 'Opera', 'IE'] browsers.length #=> 5 browsers.count #=> 5
To check whether an array contains any elements at all
browsers.empty? #=> false
To check whether a particular item is included in the array
browsers.include?('Konqueror') #=> false
Items can be added to the end of an array by using either push or <<
arr = [1, 2, 3, 4] arr.push(5) #=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] arr << 6 #=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
unshift will add a new item to the beginning of an array.
arr.unshift(0) #=> [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
With insert you can add a new element to an array at any position.
arr.insert(3, 'apple') #=> [0, 1, 2, 'apple', 3, 4, 5, 6]
Using the insert method, you can also insert multiple values at once:
arr.insert(3, 'orange', 'pear', 'grapefruit') #=> [0, 1, 2, "orange", "pear", "grapefruit", "apple", 3, 4, 5, 6]
Array The method pop removes the last element in an array and returns it:
arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] arr.pop #=> 6 arr #=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
To retrieve and at the same time remove the first item, use shift:
arr.shift #=> 1 arr #=> [2, 3, 4, 5]
To delete an element at a particular index:
arr.delete_at(2) #=> 4 arr #=> [2, 3, 5]
To delete a particular element anywhere in an array, use delete:
arr = [1, 2, 2, 3] arr.delete(2) #=> 2 arr #=> [1,3]
A useful method if you need to remove nil values from an array is compact:
arr = ['foo', 0, nil, 'bar', 7, 'baz', nil] arr.compact #=> ['foo', 0, 'bar', 7, 'baz'] arr #=> ['foo', 0, nil, 'bar', 7, 'baz', nil] arr.compact! #=> ['foo', 0, 'bar', 7, 'baz'] arr #=> ['foo', 0, 'bar', 7, 'baz']
Another common need is to remove duplicate elements from an array.
It has the non-destructive uniq, and destructive method uniq!
arr = [2, 5, 6, 556, 6, 6, 8, 9, 0, 123, 556] arr.uniq #=> [2, 5, 6, 556, 8, 9, 0, 123]
Like all classes that include the Enumerable module, Array has an each method, which defines what elements should be iterated over and how. In case of Array’s each, all elements in the Array instance are yielded to the supplied block in sequence.
Note that this operation leaves the array unchanged.
arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] arr.each {|a| print a -= 10, " "} # prints: -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 #=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Another sometimes useful iterator is reverse_each which will iterate over the elements in the array in reverse order.
words = %w[first second third fourth fifth sixth] str = "" words.reverse_each {|word| str += "#{word} "} p str #=> "sixth fifth fourth third second first "
The map method can be used to create a new array based on the original array, but with the values modified by the supplied block:
arr.map {|a| 2*a} #=> [2, 4, 6, 8, 10] arr #=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] arr.map! {|a| a**2} #=> [1, 4, 9, 16, 25] arr #=> [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
Array Elements can be selected from an array according to criteria defined in a block. The selection can happen in a destructive or a non-destructive manner. While the destructive operations will modify the array they were called on, the non-destructive methods usually return a new array with the selected elements, but leave the original array unchanged.
arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] arr.select {|a| a > 3} #=> [4, 5, 6] arr.reject {|a| a < 3} #=> [3, 4, 5, 6] arr.drop_while {|a| a < 4} #=> [4, 5, 6] arr #=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
select! and reject! are the corresponding destructive methods to select and reject
Similar to select vs. reject, delete_if and keep_if have the exact opposite result when supplied with the same block:
arr.delete_if {|a| a < 4} #=> [4, 5, 6] arr #=> [4, 5, 6] arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] arr.keep_if {|a| a < 4} #=> [1, 2, 3] arr #=> [1, 2, 3]
for pack.c
Holds Integer values. You cannot add a singleton method to an Integer object, any attempt to do so will raise a TypeError.
Numeric is the class from which all higher-level numeric classes should inherit.
Numeric allows instantiation of heap-allocated objects. Other core numeric classes such as Integer are implemented as immediates, which means that each Integer is a single immutable object which is always passed by value.
a = 1 1.object_id == a.object_id #=> true
There can only ever be one instance of the integer 1, for example. Ruby ensures this by preventing instantiation. If duplication is attempted, the same instance is returned.
Integer.new(1) #=> NoMethodError: undefined method `new' for Integer:Class 1.dup #=> 1 1.object_id == 1.dup.object_id #=> true
For this reason, Numeric should be used when defining other numeric classes.
Classes which inherit from Numeric must implement coerce, which returns a two-member Array containing an object that has been coerced into an instance of the new class and self (see coerce).
Inheriting classes should also implement arithmetic operator methods (+, -, * and /) and the <=> operator (see Comparable). These methods may rely on coerce to ensure interoperability with instances of other numeric classes.
class Tally < Numeric def initialize(string) @string = string end def to_s @string end def to_i @string.size end def coerce(other) [self.class.new('|' * other.to_i), self] end def <=>(other) to_i <=> other.to_i end def +(other) self.class.new('|' * (to_i + other.to_i)) end def -(other) self.class.new('|' * (to_i - other.to_i)) end def *(other) self.class.new('|' * (to_i * other.to_i)) end def /(other) self.class.new('|' * (to_i / other.to_i)) end end tally = Tally.new('||') puts tally * 2 #=> "||||" puts tally > 1 #=> true
Fibers are primitives for implementing light weight cooperative concurrency in Ruby. Basically they are a means of creating code blocks that can be paused and resumed, much like threads. The main difference is that they are never preempted and that the scheduling must be done by the programmer and not the VM.
As opposed to other stackless light weight concurrency models, each fiber comes with a stack. This enables the fiber to be paused from deeply nested function calls within the fiber block. See the ruby(1) manpage to configure the size of the fiber stack(s).
When a fiber is created it will not run automatically. Rather it must be explicitly asked to run using the Fiber#resume method. The code running inside the fiber can give up control by calling Fiber.yield in which case it yields control back to caller (the caller of the Fiber#resume).
Upon yielding or termination the Fiber returns the value of the last executed expression
For instance:
fiber = Fiber.new do Fiber.yield 1 2 end puts fiber.resume puts fiber.resume puts fiber.resume
produces
1 2 FiberError: dead fiber called
The Fiber#resume method accepts an arbitrary number of parameters, if it is the first call to resume then they will be passed as block arguments. Otherwise they will be the return value of the call to Fiber.yield
Example:
fiber = Fiber.new do |first| second = Fiber.yield first + 2 end puts fiber.resume 10 puts fiber.resume 1_000_000 puts fiber.resume "The fiber will be dead before I can cause trouble"
produces
12 1000000 FiberError: dead fiber called
Since Ruby 3.0, the concept of non-blocking fiber was introduced. Non-blocking fiber, when reaching any potentially blocking operation (like sleep, wait for another process, wait for I/O data to be ready), instead of just freezing itself and all execution in the thread, yields control to other fibers, and allows the scheduler to handle waiting and waking (resuming) the fiber when it can proceed.
For Fiber to behave as non-blocking, it should be created in Fiber.new with blocking: false (which is the default now), and Fiber.scheduler should be set with Fiber.set_scheduler. If Fiber.scheduler is not set in the current thread, blocking and non-blocking fiber’s behavior is identical.
Ruby doesn’t provide a scheduler class: it is expected to be implemented by the user and correspond to Fiber::SchedulerInterface.
There is also Fiber.schedule method, which is expected to immediately perform passed block in a non-blocking manner (but its actual implementation is up to the scheduler).
A class which allows both internal and external iteration.
An Enumerator can be created by the following methods.
Most methods have two forms: a block form where the contents are evaluated for each item in the enumeration, and a non-block form which returns a new Enumerator wrapping the iteration.
enumerator = %w(one two three).each puts enumerator.class # => Enumerator enumerator.each_with_object("foo") do |item, obj| puts "#{obj}: #{item}" end # foo: one # foo: two # foo: three enum_with_obj = enumerator.each_with_object("foo") puts enum_with_obj.class # => Enumerator enum_with_obj.each do |item, obj| puts "#{obj}: #{item}" end # foo: one # foo: two # foo: three
This allows you to chain Enumerators together. For example, you can map a list’s elements to strings containing the index and the element as a string via:
puts %w[foo bar baz].map.with_index { |w, i| "#{i}:#{w}" } # => ["0:foo", "1:bar", "2:baz"]
An Enumerator can also be used as an external iterator. For example, Enumerator#next returns the next value of the iterator or raises StopIteration if the Enumerator is at the end.
e = [1,2,3].each # returns an enumerator object. puts e.next # => 1 puts e.next # => 2 puts e.next # => 3 puts e.next # raises StopIteration
Note that enumeration sequence by next, next_values, peek and peek_values do not affect other non-external enumeration methods, unless the underlying iteration method itself has side-effect, e.g. IO#each_line.
Moreover, implementation typically uses fibers so performance could be slower and exception stacktraces different than expected.
You can use this to implement an internal iterator as follows:
def ext_each(e) while true begin vs = e.next_values rescue StopIteration return $!.result end y = yield(*vs) e.feed y end end o = Object.new def o.each puts yield puts yield(1) puts yield(1, 2) 3 end # use o.each as an internal iterator directly. puts o.each {|*x| puts x; [:b, *x] } # => [], [:b], [1], [:b, 1], [1, 2], [:b, 1, 2], 3 # convert o.each to an external iterator for # implementing an internal iterator. puts ext_each(o.to_enum) {|*x| puts x; [:b, *x] } # => [], [:b], [1], [:b, 1], [1, 2], [:b, 1, 2], 3
Raised when encountering an object that is not of the expected type.
[1, 2, 3].first("two")
raises the exception:
TypeError: no implicit conversion of String into Integer
Raised when the given index is invalid.
a = [:foo, :bar] a.fetch(0) #=> :foo a[4] #=> nil a.fetch(4) #=> IndexError: index 4 outside of array bounds: -2...2
Raised when the specified key is not found. It is a subclass of IndexError.
h = {"foo" => :bar} h.fetch("foo") #=> :bar h.fetch("baz") #=> KeyError: key not found: "baz"
Raised when a given numerical value is out of range.
[1, 2, 3].drop(1 << 100)
raises the exception:
RangeError: bignum too big to convert into `long'
Raised when encountering Ruby code with an invalid syntax.
eval("1+1=2")
raises the exception:
SyntaxError: (eval):1: syntax error, unexpected '=', expecting $end
Raised when a file required (a Ruby script, extension library, …) fails to load.
require 'this/file/does/not/exist'
raises the exception:
LoadError: no such file to load -- this/file/does/not/exist
Raised when a given name is invalid or undefined.
puts foo
raises the exception:
NameError: undefined local variable or method `foo' for main:Object
Since constant names must start with a capital:
Integer.const_set :answer, 42
raises the exception:
NameError: wrong constant name answer
Raised when a method is called on a receiver which doesn’t have it defined and also fails to respond with method_missing.
"hello".to_ary
raises the exception:
NoMethodError: undefined method `to_ary' for "hello":String
Raised when there is an attempt to modify a frozen object.
[1, 2, 3].freeze << 4
raises the exception:
FrozenError: can't modify frozen Array
Raised when memory allocation fails.
EncodingError is the base class for encoding errors.
SystemCallError is the base class for all low-level platform-dependent errors.
The errors available on the current platform are subclasses of SystemCallError and are defined in the Errno module.
File.open("does/not/exist")
raises the exception:
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - does/not/exist
DateTime A subclass of Date that easily handles date, hour, minute, second, and offset.
DateTime class is considered deprecated. Use Time class.
DateTime does not consider any leap seconds, does not track any summer time rules.
A DateTime object is created with DateTime::new, DateTime::jd, DateTime::ordinal, DateTime::commercial, DateTime::parse, DateTime::strptime, DateTime::now, Time#to_datetime, etc.
require 'date' DateTime.new(2001,2,3,4,5,6) #=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-03T04:05:06+00:00 ...>
The last element of day, hour, minute, or second can be a fractional number. The fractional number’s precision is assumed at most nanosecond.
DateTime.new(2001,2,3.5) #=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-03T12:00:00+00:00 ...>
An optional argument, the offset, indicates the difference between the local time and UTC. For example, Rational(3,24) represents ahead of 3 hours of UTC, Rational(-5,24) represents behind of 5 hours of UTC. The offset should be -1 to +1, and its precision is assumed at most second. The default value is zero (equals to UTC).
DateTime.new(2001,2,3,4,5,6,Rational(3,24)) #=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-03T04:05:06+03:00 ...>
The offset also accepts string form:
DateTime.new(2001,2,3,4,5,6,'+03:00') #=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-03T04:05:06+03:00 ...>
An optional argument, the day of calendar reform (start), denotes a Julian day number, which should be 2298874 to 2426355 or negative/positive infinity. The default value is Date::ITALY (2299161=1582-10-15).
A DateTime object has various methods. See each reference.
d = DateTime.parse('3rd Feb 2001 04:05:06+03:30') #=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-03T04:05:06+03:30 ...> d.hour #=> 4 d.min #=> 5 d.sec #=> 6 d.offset #=> (7/48) d.zone #=> "+03:30" d += Rational('1.5') #=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-04%16:05:06+03:30 ...> d = d.new_offset('+09:00') #=> #<DateTime: 2001-02-04%21:35:06+09:00 ...> d.strftime('%I:%M:%S %p') #=> "09:35:06 PM" d > DateTime.new(1999) #=> true
DateTime and when should you use Time? It’s a common misconception that William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died on the same day in history - so much so that UNESCO named April 23 as World Book Day because of this fact. However, because England hadn’t yet adopted the Gregorian Calendar Reform (and wouldn’t until 1752) their deaths are actually 10 days apart. Since Ruby’s Time class implements a proleptic Gregorian calendar and has no concept of calendar reform there’s no way to express this with Time objects. This is where DateTime steps in:
shakespeare = DateTime.iso8601('1616-04-23', Date::ENGLAND) #=> Tue, 23 Apr 1616 00:00:00 +0000 cervantes = DateTime.iso8601('1616-04-23', Date::ITALY) #=> Sat, 23 Apr 1616 00:00:00 +0000
Already you can see something is weird - the days of the week are different. Taking this further:
cervantes == shakespeare #=> false (shakespeare - cervantes).to_i #=> 10
This shows that in fact they died 10 days apart (in reality 11 days since Cervantes died a day earlier but was buried on the 23rd). We can see the actual date of Shakespeare’s death by using the gregorian method to convert it:
shakespeare.gregorian #=> Tue, 03 May 1616 00:00:00 +0000
So there’s an argument that all the celebrations that take place on the 23rd April in Stratford-upon-Avon are actually the wrong date since England is now using the Gregorian calendar. You can see why when we transition across the reform date boundary:
# start off with the anniversary of Shakespeare's birth in 1751 shakespeare = DateTime.iso8601('1751-04-23', Date::ENGLAND) #=> Tue, 23 Apr 1751 00:00:00 +0000 # add 366 days since 1752 is a leap year and April 23 is after February 29 shakespeare + 366 #=> Thu, 23 Apr 1752 00:00:00 +0000 # add another 365 days to take us to the anniversary in 1753 shakespeare + 366 + 365 #=> Fri, 04 May 1753 00:00:00 +0000
As you can see, if we’re accurately tracking the number of solar years since Shakespeare’s birthday then the correct anniversary date would be the 4th May and not the 23rd April.
So when should you use DateTime in Ruby and when should you use Time? Almost certainly you’ll want to use Time since your app is probably dealing with current dates and times. However, if you need to deal with dates and times in a historical context you’ll want to use DateTime to avoid making the same mistakes as UNESCO. If you also have to deal with timezones then best of luck - just bear in mind that you’ll probably be dealing with local solar times, since it wasn’t until the 19th century that the introduction of the railways necessitated the need for Standard Time and eventually timezones.
Time is an abstraction of dates and times. Time is stored internally as the number of seconds with subsecond since the Epoch, 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
The Time class treats GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) as equivalent. GMT is the older way of referring to these baseline times but persists in the names of calls on POSIX systems.
All times may have subsecond. Be aware of this fact when comparing times with each other – times that are apparently equal when displayed may be different when compared. (Since Ruby 2.7.0, Time#inspect shows subsecond but Time#to_s still doesn’t show subsecond.)
Since Ruby 1.9.2, Time implementation uses a signed 63 bit integer, Bignum or Rational. The integer is a number of nanoseconds since the Epoch which can represent 1823-11-12 to 2116-02-20. When Bignum or Rational is used (before 1823, after 2116, under nanosecond), Time works slower as when integer is used.
All of these examples were done using the EST timezone which is GMT-5.
Time instance You can create a new instance of Time with Time.new. This will use the current system time. Time.now is an alias for this. You can also pass parts of the time to Time.new such as year, month, minute, etc. When you want to construct a time this way you must pass at least a year. If you pass the year with nothing else time will default to January 1 of that year at 00:00:00 with the current system timezone. Here are some examples:
Time.new(2002) #=> 2002-01-01 00:00:00 -0500 Time.new(2002, 10) #=> 2002-10-01 00:00:00 -0500 Time.new(2002, 10, 31) #=> 2002-10-31 00:00:00 -0500
You can pass a UTC offset:
Time.new(2002, 10, 31, 2, 2, 2, "+02:00") #=> 2002-10-31 02:02:02 +0200
Or a timezone object:
tz = timezone("Europe/Athens") # Eastern European Time, UTC+2 Time.new(2002, 10, 31, 2, 2, 2, tz) #=> 2002-10-31 02:02:02 +0200
You can also use Time.local and Time.utc to infer local and UTC timezones instead of using the current system setting.
You can also create a new time using Time.at which takes the number of seconds (with subsecond) since the Unix Epoch.
Time.at(628232400) #=> 1989-11-28 00:00:00 -0500
Time Once you have an instance of Time there is a multitude of things you can do with it. Below are some examples. For all of the following examples, we will work on the assumption that you have done the following:
t = Time.new(1993, 02, 24, 12, 0, 0, "+09:00")
Was that a monday?
t.monday? #=> false
What year was that again?
t.year #=> 1993
Was it daylight savings at the time?
t.dst? #=> false
What’s the day a year later?
t + (60*60*24*365) #=> 1994-02-24 12:00:00 +0900
How many seconds was that since the Unix Epoch?
t.to_i #=> 730522800
You can also do standard functions like compare two times.
t1 = Time.new(2010) t2 = Time.new(2011) t1 == t2 #=> false t1 == t1 #=> true t1 < t2 #=> true t1 > t2 #=> false Time.new(2010,10,31).between?(t1, t2) #=> true
A timezone argument must have local_to_utc and utc_to_local methods, and may have name, abbr, and dst? methods.
The local_to_utc method should convert a Time-like object from the timezone to UTC, and utc_to_local is the opposite. The result also should be a Time or Time-like object (not necessary to be the same class). The zone of the result is just ignored. Time-like argument to these methods is similar to a Time object in UTC without subsecond; it has attribute readers for the parts, e.g. year, month, and so on, and epoch time readers, to_i. The subsecond attributes are fixed as 0, and utc_offset, zone, isdst, and their aliases are same as a Time object in UTC. Also to_time, +, and - methods are defined.
The name method is used for marshaling. If this method is not defined on a timezone object, Time objects using that timezone object can not be dumped by Marshal.
The abbr method is used by ‘%Z’ in strftime.
The dst? method is called with a Time value and should return whether the Time value is in daylight savings time in the zone.
At loading marshaled data, a timezone name will be converted to a timezone object by find_timezone class method, if the method is defined.
Similarly, that class method will be called when a timezone argument does not have the necessary methods mentioned above.
Expect library adds the IO instance method expect, which does similar act to tcl’s expect extension.
In order to use this method, you must require expect:
require 'expect'
Please see expect for usage.
The IO class is the basis for all input and output in Ruby. An I/O stream may be duplexed (that is, bidirectional), and so may use more than one native operating system stream.
Many of the examples in this section use the File class, the only standard subclass of IO. The two classes are closely associated. Like the File class, the Socket library subclasses from IO (such as TCPSocket or UDPSocket).
The Kernel#open method can create an IO (or File) object for these types of arguments:
A plain string represents a filename suitable for the underlying operating system.
A string starting with "|" indicates a subprocess. The remainder of the string following the "|" is invoked as a process with appropriate input/output channels connected to it.
A string equal to "|-" will create another Ruby instance as a subprocess.
The IO may be opened with different file modes (read-only, write-only) and encodings for proper conversion. See IO.new for these options. See Kernel#open for details of the various command formats described above.
IO.popen, the Open3 library, or Process#spawn may also be used to communicate with subprocesses through an IO.
Ruby will convert pathnames between different operating system conventions if possible. For instance, on a Windows system the filename "/gumby/ruby/test.rb" will be opened as "\gumby\ruby\test.rb". When specifying a Windows-style filename in a Ruby string, remember to escape the backslashes:
"C:\\gumby\\ruby\\test.rb"
Our examples here will use the Unix-style forward slashes; File::ALT_SEPARATOR can be used to get the platform-specific separator character.
The global constant ARGF (also accessible as $<) provides an IO-like stream which allows access to all files mentioned on the command line (or STDIN if no files are mentioned). ARGF#path and its alias ARGF#filename are provided to access the name of the file currently being read.
The io/console extension provides methods for interacting with the console. The console can be accessed from IO.console or the standard input/output/error IO objects.
Requiring io/console adds the following methods:
Example:
require 'io/console' rows, columns = $stdout.winsize puts "Your screen is #{columns} wide and #{rows} tall"