From: Greg Millam <ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2005-10-17T13:23:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Editing in Ruby

Shreyas wrote:
> In any case, I was wondering if anyone knew either (a) how to get a 
> list of all the functions in ruby exported to an API file, or (b) if 
> there is an editor out there that can help out. Many times when I'm 
> programming, it's nice to just be able to see what the valid
> functions are for the object in question, rather than having to look
> it up in the API documentation.

Use irb with irb/completion

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'irb/completion'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> f = "Hello, world!"
=> "Hello, world!"
irb(main):003:0> f.downcase
f.downcase   f.downcase!
irb(main):003:0> f.downcase

If you hit f.down<tab>, it'll complete to downcase. hit it twice, and
it'll show "f.downcase  f.downcase!"

If you want to find other methods, try using f.methods.grep

irb(main):004:0> f.methods.grep /case/
=> ["downcase", "downcase!", "casecmp", "swapcase", "swapcase!",
"upcase", "upcase!"]

f.case<tab> will pull out f.casecmp for you.

This works with any valid object in irb.

irb(main):005:0> i = 1
=> 1
irb(main):006:0> i.methods.grep /case/
=> []
irb(main):007:0> i.methods.grep /zero/
=> ["zero?", "nonzero?"]


It's very handy, and I use it a lot, even though I've been rubying for
about 3 years.

Hope that helps you, too!

- Greg