From: Michael Davis <mdavis@...>
Date: 2001-11-21T03:44:35+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:25937] RE:  File access modes

File.open("counter", "w+") - creates the file
File.open("counter", "r+") - opens the file for reading and writing.



-----Original Message-----
From:	HarryO [SMTP:harryo@zipworld.com.au]
Sent:	Monday, November 19, 2001 10:12 PM
To:	ruby-talk ML; undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject:	[ruby-talk:25890] File access modes

I wanted to write some code that would update a counter stored
in a  file.  The following code works just fine ...

   File.open("counter", File::CREAT | File::RDWR) do |f|
 
       f.flock(File::LOCK_EX)
 
       count = f.gets.to_i
       f.rewind
       f.puts count + 1
 
   end

....  but I orginally wrote the File.open() as ...

   File.open("counter", "w+")

and the f.gets seemed to return an empty string every time,
irrespective of whether the file already existed, and even if
I put an extra f.rewind before it (although, I thought that was
redundant).

Is there a string-style mode that's equivalent to the specific
mode flags I've use above?