From: Alex Young <alex@...>
Date: 2007-07-21T19:09:25+09:00
Subject: Re: like man or apropos for Ruby

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Rick DeNatale wrote:
>> On 7/20/07, Tim Hunter <TimHunter@nc.rr.com> wrote:
>>> Phlip wrote:
>>>> Rubiods:
>>>>
>>>> After years of studying Ruby, one factoid has eluded me. Actually,
>>> more than
>>>> one, but I have to start somewhere...
>>>>
>>>> How, on a command line, can I do the equivalent of 'apropos' or
>>> 'man'? How
>>>> can I search the RDoc knowledge base installed on my own computer,
>>> with a
>>>> 'less' interface, without Googling for everything all the time?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Assuming you installed the documentation, you can use ri.
>>>
>>> ri String#to_i
>>>
>>> for example.
>> And for a better performing alternative, get Mauricio Fernandez fastri
>> http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?fastri
>>
>> It provides a qri command which pretty much directly substitutes for
>> ri.  It's available as a gem.
>>
> IIRC it is *significantly* faster if you install from a tarball rather
> than as a gem, but I don't remember why. Can someone enlighten me?
> 
Presumably (and this is a wild stab in the dark) if it's installed as a 
gem, it requires rubygems before doing anything to do with your query. 
Loading rubygems is itself a slow operation.

-- 
Alex