# Helping ri find rdoc

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/helping-ri-find-rdoc/93225>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [April 29, 2007, 4:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/helping-ri-find-rdoc/93225 "2007-04-29T16:49:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sdsykes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@sdsykes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sdsykes)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 4:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/helping-ri-find-rdoc/93225/1 "2007-04-29T16:49:07Z")

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Hi,

So I noticed that documentation for ri seems to be stored in yaml files  
in  
subdirectories of my opt/local/share/ri/1.8/system folder. And not in  
usr/local/bin or usr/bin with my tools.

I always see rdoc generating help files for my gems as they install. But  
whenever I ri (e.g., ri “Something”), I get “nothing known about  
#{Something}”. Even for Array and String, I get “nothing.”

Is there an environment variable for the ri path? What should it be? Or  
am I  
just missing something?

TIA,  
Steve

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sdsykes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@sdsykes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sdsykes)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 8:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/helping-ri-find-rdoc/93225/2 "2007-04-29T20:18:22Z")

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Stephen S. wrote:

> Is there an environment variable for the ri path? What should it be? Or  
> am I  
> just missing something?
> 
> TIA,  
> Steve

Steve,

ri --doc-dir /opt/local/share/ri/1.8/system Array

This option can be specified multiple times. Perhaps you want to set an  
alias.

Dan