# IHelp 0.4.5 - Interactive Help

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ihelp-0-4-5-interactive-help/81251>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [January 6, 2007, 7:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ihelp-0-4-5-interactive-help/81251 "2007-01-06T19:30:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ilmari\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/a587f6/32.png) [@Ilmari\_H](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ilmari_H)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2007, 7:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ihelp-0-4-5-interactive-help/81251/1 "2007-01-06T19:30:43Z")

</div>

View and search Ruby documentation from irb.

This one’s a bugfix release  
0.4.5

- Use RI environment variable to pass config to ri (thanks to Parragh  
Szabolcs.)
- Bugfix for missing require ‘stringio’ (thanks to Marcel M. Cary.)
- Show first thousand hits instead of a mere ten.

If you run into problems, please let me know.

sudo gem install ihelp

Downloads: [http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group\_id=2597](http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=2597)  
Documentation: [http://ihelp.rubyforge.org](http://ihelp.rubyforge.org)  
Project page: [http://rubyforge.org/projects/ihelp/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ihelp/)  
Screenshots:  
[http://ihelp.rubyforge.org/ihelp1.png](http://ihelp.rubyforge.org/ihelp1.png)  
[http://ihelp.rubyforge.org/ihelp2.png](http://ihelp.rubyforge.org/ihelp2.png)

REQUIREMENTS

- Generated RI docs (make install-doc)
- To use full-text search, Ferret: [http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret)

QUICK USAGE

“How do I justify a string?”  
ihelp ‘justifying strings’  
ihelp ‘How do I justify a string?’ # watch out for noise words

“I need to read little-endian ints from a string”

> String.help ‘little-endian int’

“Hmm, how does String#unpack work?”

> String.help:unpack

“Okay, so now I have this Array of ints, what was the syntax of inject  
again?”

> ints.help:inject

“What is this object and what can i do with it?”

> object.help

“Someone told me that I should look up Mutex#synchronize… but I  
don’t have that loaded.”

> ihelp “Mutex#synchronize”

LOADING AUTOMATICALLY IN IRB

Add the following to your .irbrc:

# Loading RI may take a second or two so let’s make it

# snappier by loading in the background.

Thread.new do  
require ‘ihelp’  
end

## If you don’t like the colors in the search results

# IHelp.no\_colors = true

## Renderer to use, one of ‘ri’, ‘rubydoc’, ‘emacs’, ‘source’, ‘html’

## default is ‘ri’

# IHelp.renderer = ‘rubydoc’

## Web browser to use with renderers ‘rubydoc’ and ‘html’

## default is ‘firefox’

# IHelp.web\_browser = ‘konqueror’