From: Dave Thomas <dave@...>
Date: 2004-07-14T03:55:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Printing contents of a method


On Jul 13, 2004, at 13:43, Nate Smith wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 14:24, Dave Thomas wrote:
>>>> Does anyone know how to actually print (as a string) the contents 
>>>> of a
>>>> given method? I've googled and searched books, to no avail. Thanks
>>>> much
>>>> for any help
>>
>> Might SCRIPT_LINES help? (if the method is loaded into your program
>> after it starts)
>
> Forgive me if I sound stupid, but what is SCRIPT_LINES? I search google
> for it and it only came up with Perl references, and a couple of emails
> that you wrote which had the word in it. Thanks!
>

Here's some stuff from the  new pickaxe:

SCRIPT_LINES__ (Hash)

If a constant SCRIPT_LINES__ is defined and references a Hash at the 
time Ruby is compiling code, Ruby will store an entry containing the 
contents of each file it parses, with the file�s name as the key and an 
array of strings as the value. See Kernel.require on page ?? for an 
example.

and then over in Kernel.require:

The SCRIPT_LINES__ constant can be used to capture the source of code 
read using require.

SCRIPT_LINES__ = {}
require 'code/scriptlines'
puts "Files: #{SCRIPT_LINES__.keys.join(', ')}"
SCRIPT_LINES__['./code/scriptlines.rb'].each do |line|
    puts "Source: #{line}"
end

produces:

3/8 Files: ./code/scriptlines.rb, 
/Users/dave/ruby1.8/lib/ruby/1.8/rational.rb
Source: require 'rational'
Source:
Source: puts Rational(1,2)*Rational(3,4)

(where code/scriptlines.rb does indeed contain the three lines of code 
listed above).


Cheers

Dave