From: Marc-Andre Lafortune <redmine@...>
Date: 2010-03-27T04:14:57+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:29048] [Bug #3022] What are $. and ARGF.lineno ?

Bug #3022: What are $. and ARGF.lineno ?
http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/3022

Author: Marc-Andre Lafortune
Status: Open, Priority: Normal
Category: core, Target version: 1.9.2
ruby -v: ruby 1.9.2dev (2010-03-03 trunk 26805) [x86_64-darwin10.2.0] 

1) $. is not officially documented.

This makes it difficult to know if it works as expected or not...

The Ruby Prog Language (Flanagan & Matz) states:
"The number of the last line read from the current input file. Equivalent to ARGF.lineno."

This is not true in trunk, as demonstrated by:

  $ rubydev -e "
      ARGF.gets
      File.open('/etc/passwd'){|f| f.gets; f.gets}
      p $., ARGF.lineno
    " /etc/hosts
  2
  1


What is the "current input file"? Not clear, but it's not thread local, as shown:

  $ rubydev -e "
    p $.
    Thread.new{File.open('/etc/passwd').gets; p $. }.join;
    p $.
  "
  0
  1
  1



2) ARGF.lineno does not conform to its doc.

The doc states:

  Returns the current line number of the current file in ARGF. This value
  can be set manually with ARGF.lineno=.


Reading this, I would expect ARGF.lineno to be the same as ARGF.to_io.lineno.

That is not the case:

  rubydev -e 'p "#{ARGF.lineno} #{ARGF.to_io.lineno}" while ARGF.gets' /etc/hosts /etc/passwd
  "1 1"
  "2 2"
  ...
  "25 1"
  "26 2"
  ...


1) Maybe the best definition would be that $. returns the number of line read operations issued, from the last time an IO was read in the current thread?

2) I suggest the documentation of ARGF.lineno be changed to:

  Returns the current line number of ARGF as a whole. This value
  can be set manually with ARGF.lineno=.


See also [ruby-core:26303]


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