From: Navindra Umanee <navindra@...>
Date: 2005-01-24T00:59:07+09:00
Subject: Re: File.read not returning nil [newbie]

Tim Heaney <theaney@cablespeed.com> wrote:
> It doesn't for me. I get the empty string both times. But why?

I guess that's better than being inconsistent.  nil would have been
nicer, IMHO.  Do you know if there is a way to make "" equivalent to
nil?  I guess I could try messing around with the NilClass.

Just so that I'm clear.  You tried this:

File.open("/dev/null") { |file|
  print "file.read should return nil\n" if file.eof?
  print "file.read: "
  print file.read
  print "\n"
}

and got it to print the empty string?

>   $ ruby -e 'p IO.read("/dev/null")'
>   ""

Same here.

Thanks,
Navin.