# Are comments objects?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/are-comments-objects/89903>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 23, 2007, 5:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/are-comments-objects/89903 "2007-03-23T17:36:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2007, 5:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/are-comments-objects/89903/1 "2007-03-23T17:36:46Z")

</div>

Are comment blocks objects? I want to be able to access all (or just  
one) the comment blocks for an object. Then I can make a .help for  
each object.

a=“a”  
puts a.help

#{list all methods maybe?}

puts a.help(:split)

"Divides str into substrings based on a delimiter, returning an array  
of these substrings.

If pattern is a String, then its contents are used as the delimiter  
when splitting str. If pattern is a single space, str is split on  
whitespace, with leading whitespace and runs of contiguous whitespace  
characters ignored.

If pattern is a Regexp, str is divided where the pattern matches.  
Whenever the pattern matches a zero-length string, str is split into  
individual characters.

If pattern is omitted, the value of $; is used. If $; is nil (which is  
the default), str is split on whitespace as if ` ’ were specified.

If the limit parameter is omitted, trailing null fields are  
suppressed. If limit is a positive number, at most that number of  
fields will be returned (if limit is 1, the entire string is returned  
as the only entry in an array). If negative, there is no limit to the  
number of fields returned, and trailing null fields are not  
suppressed. "

If one can not access comments I can try open the C file and parse the  
comment blocks.

Maybe it would not put out that much information but you get the basic  
idea.

Stephen B. IV

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2007, 5:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/are-comments-objects/89903/2 "2007-03-23T17:50:50Z")

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2007/3/23, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid):

> Are comment blocks objects? I want to be able to access all (or just  
> one) the comment blocks for an object. Then I can make a .help for  
> each object.

I’ve stripped the implementation details. To make a simple answer,  
ruby simply ignores the comments when parsing the source code. So the  
comments are not available to the ruby interpreter. However, you can  
either re-parse the open files or use the ri indexes to fetch the  
according methods. Mauricio F.[1] has done some nice job[2] on  
comment indexing and methods lookup, based on the initial RDoc work.  
If I where you, I would look at that first. Secondly, I think that  
there already is a help.rb file in the stdlib that does what you want,  
or at least a gem is flying around here.

I hope this helps you go further with your investigations

–  
Cheers,  
zimbatm

[1] : [http://eigenclass.org](http://eigenclass.org)  
[2] : [http://rubyforge.org/projects/fastri/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/fastri/)