[ ruby-Bugs-8906 ] Request for more thorough introspective documentation

Bugs item #8906, was opened at 2007-02-27 05:15
You can respond by visiting: 
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=1698&aid=8906&group_id=426

Category: Core
Group: None
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 3
Submitted By: Roger Pack (rogerdpack)
Assigned to: Nobody (None)
Summary: Request for more thorough introspective documentation

Initial Comment:
I think one thing that would *really* speed up dev. and learning time would be a new method for easier introspection of descriptions of functions.  So basically as you are "learning" ruby say you can do the following:

>>mysteryclass.methods
=> ["dosomething", "dosomethingelse"]
mysteryclass.method("dosomething").describe
=> "dosomething(variableOne, variableTwo = false) # this is to do x and y--see http://fakepage.com"

This would then be very similar to the existing
object.method(meth).arity command.

A first hack at this would be to just have "Object.describe(function)" return the line from the source which defined the function, if possible.  I realize that for more complex functions this wouldn't be possible, but for 95% of functions it would). Would there be any interest for me to try to implement this for the core, maybe of 2.0? 

I would consider this super useful to those of us that enjoy learning on the command line--who, having used Ruby, has NOT wondered "just what do all of those different functions do?" and not wanted to have to go all the way to the (sometimes out of date, sometimes hard to find) documentation?

Thank you for your thought and consideration. This functionality may already exist, but thought I'd mention it.

-Roger [PS Thank you Matz for visiting BYU--quite a pleasure :) ]

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You can respond by visiting: 
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=1698&aid=8906&group_id=426