From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2005-08-18T03:58:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there a simpler way to do this?

On 8/17/05, astrodean@yahoo.co.uk <astrodean@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I believe the following does it...

> the_string=File.readlines("/usr/blah/1.txt"').join

Yes. But there's a problem with this -- it does more work than
necessary. The IO.read approach that is superior. However, I prefer:

  contents = open(filename, "rb") { |f| f.read }

It's not quite as short as the IO.read approach, but it does two things for me:

1. It's safe for text or binary files on all platforms.
2. Because I'm using "open", if I do "require 'open-uri'", then
filename can also be a URL to a remoate location.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca