From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2006-10-14T18:15:14+09:00
Subject: Re: File.puts or File.write ?

Joe Ruby MUDCRAP-CE wrote:
> For general purpose file writing, does it matter whether puts or write 
> is used? From the docs, it seems like puts should be used for strings, 
> while write can be used for anything. I'm not really sure what 
> difference there is between the two, but the docs say something about 
> puts adding newlines or something.

I tend to view #puts and #print as printing methodsi, i.e. for textual 
output.  Note also that they accept multiple parameters.

#write on the other hand is more low level and is actually sending off 
the string it gets to the underlying stream whereas #puts applies some 
modifications (newline, special treatment of things that implement 
#to_ary etc.)

Typically I use #write for stream copy operations like

File.open("foo", "rb") do |in|
   File.open("bar", "wb") do |out|
     while ( buffer = in.read( 1024 ) )
       out.write( buffer )
     end
   end
end

Kind regards

	robert