Like man or apropos for Ruby

Ruby
1

Rubiods:

After years of studying Ruby, one factoid has eluded me. Actually, more
than
one, but I have to start somewhere…

How, on a command line, can I do the equivalent of ‘apropos’ or ‘man’?
How
can I search the RDoc knowledge base installed on my own computer, with
a
‘less’ interface, without Googling for everything all the time?

2

Phlip wrote:

Rubiods:

After years of studying Ruby, one factoid has eluded me. Actually, more than
one, but I have to start somewhere…

How, on a command line, can I do the equivalent of ‘apropos’ or ‘man’? How
can I search the RDoc knowledge base installed on my own computer, with a
‘less’ interface, without Googling for everything all the time?

Assuming you installed the documentation, you can use ri.

ri String#to_i

for example.

3

On 7/20/07, Phlip [email protected] wrote:

–
Phlip
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510657/
“Test Driven Ajax (on Rails)”
assert_xpath, assert_javascript, & assert_ajax

It’s spelled “ri”.

ri Array

ri String

ri Hash#each

ri Object::new

4

On Jul 20, 2007, at 7:00 PM, Phlip wrote:

‘less’ interface, without Googling for everything all the time?

–
Phlip
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510657/
“Test Driven Ajax (on Rails)”
assert_xpath, assert_javascript, & assert_ajax

ri

example:
ri ClassName
ri method_name
ri Class#method
ri Class.method

5

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

‘man’? How
And for a better performing alternative, get Mauricio F. fastri
eigenclass.org

It provides a qri command which pretty much directly substitutes for
ri. It’s available as a gem.

IIRC it is significantly faster if you install from a tarball rather
than as a gem, but I don’t remember why. Can someone enlighten me?

Presumably (and this is a wild stab in the dark) if it’s installed as a
gem, it requires rubygems before doing anything to do with your query.
Loading rubygems is itself a slow operation.

6

Rick DeNatale wrote:

can I search the RDoc knowledge base installed on my own computer,
And for a better performing alternative, get Mauricio F. fastri
eigenclass.org

It provides a qri command which pretty much directly substitutes for
ri. It’s available as a gem.

IIRC it is significantly faster if you install from a tarball rather
than as a gem, but I don’t remember why. Can someone enlighten me?

7

On 7/20/07, Tim H. [email protected] wrote:

Assuming you installed the documentation, you can use ri.

ri String#to_i

for example.

And for a better performing alternative, get Mauricio F. fastri
http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?fastri

It provides a qri command which pretty much directly substitutes for
ri. It’s available as a gem.

–
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/

8

On 7/20/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [email protected] wrote:

Rick DeNatale wrote:

It provides a qri command which pretty much directly substitutes for
ri. It’s available as a gem.

IIRC it is significantly faster if you install from a tarball rather
than as a gem, but I don’t remember why. Can someone enlighten me?

This is true, BUT even when installed as a gem, it’s significantly
faster than ri.

The difference kicks in when you use it a lot, for example when you
use Mauricio’s tools which invoke it from inside textmate or vim.

–
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/

IPMS/USA Region 12 Coordinator
http://ipmsr12.denhaven2.com/

Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site
http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/

9

I am a dreamer and i also admit i like CSS and good looking, visual
clean documentation in a browser, but i still hope that one day a huge,
up-to-date ruby reference can be read online, maintained with useful
remarks (optional) by a community - and that we can leave rdoc as a
relict of the past - or keept it for those that want it, while I could
read the fancy, stylish online docu! Dont take this too serious, i am
just wishing and hoping! And yeah, I do think that rdoc looks not very
… satisfying :>

10

Excerpts from M. Edward (Ed) Borasky’s message of Sat Jul 21 06:09:14
+0300 2007:

‘man’? How

And for a better performing alternative, get Mauricio F. fastri
eigenclass.org

It provides a qri command which pretty much directly substitutes for
ri. It’s available as a gem.

IIRC it is significantly faster if you install from a tarball rather
than as a gem, but I don’t remember why. Can someone enlighten me?
During the build I see:
A small note about RubyGems + FastRI
====================================
RubyGems adds a noticeable overhead to fri, making it run slower than if
you
installed it directly from the tarball with setup.rb.

–
Eugen Minciu.

Wasting valuable time since 1985.

11

I’ve just had a quick play about with qri and ri…

benjohn # qri TCP
nil

I guess either I don’t have much indexed, or I’m in need of a looser
search than the default? Do I need to do something to make sure ruby
and the Gems I’ve got installed are indexed? :slight_smile: I guess the likely
answer is YES!

Cheers,
Benj

12

On 7/21/07, Marc H. [email protected] wrote:

I am a dreamer and i also admit i like CSS and good looking, visual
clean documentation in a browser, but i still hope that one day a huge,
up-to-date ruby reference can be read online, maintained with useful
remarks (optional) by a community - and that we can leave rdoc as a
relict of the past - or keept it for those that want it, while I could
read the fancy, stylish online docu! Dont take this too serious, i am
just wishing and hoping! And yeah, I do think that rdoc looks not very
… satisfying :>

I’ve compiled my own rdoc of every library I have use and the core,
using a template I found online, and it looks VERY good, including
stuff like javascript search-as-you-type of the whole index (separate
for methods, files, classes).

Try that.

Aur

13

Alle domenica 22 luglio 2007, Benjohn B. ha scritto:

benjohn # qri tcpserver
Benj
If I remember correctly, you need to do

fastri-server -b

I hope this helps

Stefano