From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2006-10-20T17:09:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Etc.dir, Etc.name

Hi,

In message "Re: Etc.dir, Etc.name"
    on Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:40:13 +0900, Ronald Fischer <ronaldf@eml.cc> writes:

|I found some of the Etc functions missing which are mentioned in
|Matsumoto's book "Ruby in a nutshell", for example Etc.dir and
|Etc.shell. OTOH, Etc.name exists (for example):
|
|irb(main):002:0> Etc.dir
|NoMethodError: undefined method `dir' for Etc:Module
|        from (irb):2
|irb(main):003:0> Etc.name
|=> "Etc"
|irb(main):004:0> Etc.shell
|NoMethodError: undefined method `shell' for Etc:Module
|        from (irb):4
|        from :0

I don't have the book at hand right now (since I am staying at the
hotel in Denver for RubyConf), but Etc module never had methods dir
and shell.  If it says so, it is a bug in the book.  Sorry.

Actually, the value returned from Etc#getpwnam has dir and shell
methods.  Use them as in the following code:

  pw = Etc.getpwnam('root')
  p pw.dir	# root's home directory
  p pw.shell	# root's shell

							matz.